Posted on 06/02/2021 2:57:39 AM PDT by Kaslin
I hate waiting at traffic lights.
There's a solution: traffic circles, or roundabouts.
Traffic circles terrified me when I first confronted them in Europe. A movie, National Lampoon?s European Vacation, captured my experience when it portrayed Chevy Chase driving in London, unable to exit a rotary all day.
Besides being hard to navigate, I also assumed roundabouts cause problems, but a Freakanomics podcast woke me to their advantages. Roundabouts are a reason Britain?s rate of traffic deaths is less than half the U.S.'s.
We've converted almost all of our traffic lights to roundabouts because we save lives,? says the mayor of Carmel, Indiana, Jim Brainard. His little town now has 133 roundabouts.
A University of Wisconsin-Madison study confirmed that roundabouts save lives. Roundabouts increased crashes a bit, but deaths and injuries dropped by 38 percent.
It's because of the angle of the cars, says Brainard. Instead of a T-bone, you got a sideswipe?
Roundabouts also slow cars down a little, giving drivers more time to react.
That makes it seem like it'll take longer for cars to get through intersections, I say to Brainard.
It really doesn't, he responds. A roundabout moves 50 percent more traffic than a traffic light.
More than a four-way stop sign intersection, too, according to a test ran by the TV show Mythbusters.
Roundabouts are also better for the environment. You never come to a complete stop, Brainard points out. Tremendous amounts of fuel are saved.
Indianapolis realtor Jason Compton says roundabouts even increase the value of homes ?because they just flat out look better (by adding) more green space.
Sometimes communities put artwork in the middle.
Bottom line: Roundabouts are safer, cost less, move more traffic and are better for the environment.
Yet, most Americans still say, I don?t want these things. I tell Brainard. They're confusing. I'm more likely to have an accident!
Well, it takes public education, he responds. Chevy Chase didn't do us any favors.?
Brainard points out that Chase was stuck in a large rotary, not a roundabout. Some traffic circles and rotaries have many lanes. The one by Paris? Arc De Triomphe connects 12 roads!
Those are dangerous, says Brainard. That's not what we're building. Modern roundabouts are small; the smaller they are, the safer they become. They're very different.
Europe learned that lesson. European countries are building lots of small roundabouts.
America is way behind, I tell Brainard.
America is catching up, he replies. When I started, we probably had under a couple of hundred in the United States. Today, we're pushing five or six thousand.
That's progress.
Still, his little town, with just 97,000 residents, has 2 percent of all the roundabouts in America.
Google the fatal accident at US Hwy 50 & Us Hwy 95-a this past weekend. AT A ROUNDABOUT.
They aren’t so bad IF you re NOT towing any kind of trailer-—horse-—boat-—water ski, etc.
Otherwise, they are a nightmare.
YOU ABSOLUTELY DO come to a complete stop at roundabouts here in Nevada.
Roundabouts were a European invention and really, really dumb.
I’ve seen people backup in them because they missed a turn.
I’ve seen wait, and wait, and wait at them.
The sign are confusing to say the inner lane and the outer lane must turn together, but the outer lane doesn’t see it that way. *crash*
Here in Nevada, they go to great expense to put up all kinds of metal ‘artwork’ t the roundabouts. People gazing at such are a menace....and that ‘artwork’ is very expensive.
Yeah and I like that one metric ton is 1,000 kilograms instead of 2,000 pounds, and that it’s close enough to the non-metric ton (2204 lbs) that you don’t have to worry too much about which one you’re using. And it’s also equivalent to a cubic meter of water.
The problem with roundabouts is they require the common courtesy to yield and give right of way... We do not have that common courtesy in this country. We don’t even stop or give right of way for four way intersections that require us stop and give right of way. For these to work common courtesy is going to have to change drastically first.
“I nearly do: at the ones with a very small rounded curb.”
Humvees must be ideal for roundabouts.
Or else you'll be in a Long-Distance Runaround.
I've always been a fan of them.
I also like the "jughandles" they have in New Jersey. Instead of taking dangerous left turns on busy roads, you have an exit ramp in the right lane that brings you to a traffic signal to cross over the road safely. Takes a little getting used to but it's a nice system.
Well they’re going the wrong way for one thing but I think that’s one of the big rotaries he was talking about.
There’s a small one up in a college town near me that has five spokes with two of them being on/off ramps to the interstate. It works great and it’s single lane. I hate the multi lane type. Those are dangerous.
Iced coffee is actually less damaging to the stomach lining. Hot coffee acts like a detergent to the mucosa protecting the stomach tissue.
And that doesn’t even include the deafening horn action!
Sorted by traffic flow:
5:50 Stack interchange (2-lane ramps) [TF: 1099]
5:40 Contraflow left [TF: 948]
5:30 Turbine [TF: 927]
5:20 Pinavia [TF: 905]
5:10 Diverging Windmill [TF: 808]
5:00 Custom Cloverleaf [TF: 758]
3:20 Diverging diamond interchange [TF: 644]
4:20 Partial Cloverleaf (Parclo A4) [TF: 639]
4:40 Three level roundabout [TF: 623]
2:40 Continuous flow intersection [TF: 618]
4:30 Two level roundabout [TF: 598]
3:30 Single Point Urban Interchange [TF: 581]
4:10 Partial Cloverleaf (Parclo AB2) [TF: 570]
4:00 Partial Cloverleaf (Parclo B2) [TF: 570]
2:20 Custom roundabout with slip lanes [TF: 532]
3:10 Diamond interchange (with custom traffic lights and slip lanes) [TF: 529]
3:50 Large Dumbbell [TF: 528]
4:50 Standard Cloverleaf [TF: 516]
2:30 Turbo roundabout [TF: 501]
1:40 8-lane roads with slip lanes [TF: 490]
1:20 6-lane roads with slip lanes [TF: 465]
3:00 Diamond interchange (with traffic lights) [TF: 448]
2:50 Diamond interchange (no traffic lights) [TF: 448]
3:30 Dumbbell [TF: 443]
1:30 6-lane roads plus slip lanes [TF: 432]
1:00 6-lane roads with custom traffic lights [TF: 417]
1:10 6-lane roads with protected left turns [TF: 416]
2:10 Large roundabout [TF: 360]
2:00 standard roundabout with highway road [TF: 340]
0:30 4-lane roads plus dedicated left turn lane [TF: 320]
0:20 4-lane roads with custom traffic lights [TF: 303]
0:50 6-lane roads with traffic lights [TF: 251]
0:10 4-lane roads with traffic lights [TF: 235]
0:40 6-lane roads without traffic lights [TF: 205]
0:03 4-lane roads without traffic lights [TF: 191]
1:50 Standard roundabout (no mods) [TF:8]???
“Metric is easier”
That’s a quote I agreed with for a very long time.
Then I watched a couple of YouTube videos on Fraction ‘tricks’.
Our current system is built around the use of fractions. I hated fractions as a youth and didn’t see much point in them as a young adult. When I got to the point where I was teaching my kids I still didn’t quite get them.
Then I bought a speed square and noticed that I only used a small part of the markings available, so I looked it up. What an amazing tool!
Anyway, it showed me that there was more to fractions than I was ever taught.
That’s where the problem is - at some point they stopped teaching fractions, OR, due to the diminished role of trades, the education of fractions for those trades fell through the floor.
Once you learn to use them and associated tricks around their use you understand the genius of our ancestors in using them. They are faster than decimal when in regular use without a calculator. (4X.125 vs. 4X1/8)
“Sorted by traffic flow:”
It would be interesting to see a table like that along with average construction cost, accident rate, and traffic deaths. It seams we could easily discard the functional but non economic as well as eliminate those that create safety hazards.
I hated them in Ireland and I hate the one near my sister’s house. 😣
Easy peasy:
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