Seriously, americans need to learn about these.
We have plenty of them. They're usually pretty miserable because your average American driver is a fucking moron and they're best not deployed unless there's a safety reason to do so.
Safety benefits of roundabouts
191–200 of 409 posts
Re: Safety benefits of roundabouts
#192I could see how these have benefits in some cases. There are also drawbacks… the uncertainty of who is yielding (except maybe by AI). What about snow and ice? If you do some searching there are plenty of reasons why you might not want roundabouts.
Re: Safety benefits of roundabouts
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
The number of drivers who think you can freely exit from the inner lane suggests otherwise.
Not sure exactly what you mean by freely, but in most popular roundabout designs you can exit from the inner lane. A "standard" two lane roundabout will have two lanes entering AND exiting. You never change lanes in roundabouts, at least where I'm from. Only in a massive multi-lane roundabout (that's at that point more like a ring road) would you ever change lanes to exit. e.g. for a standard two lane roundabout with…
The car from the inner lane swiping into the car in the outer lane is the exact issue I'm talking about. The problem is when drivers enter in the left/inner lane, fully intending to take the first exit. If they proceed to exit directly from the inner lane, without first changing lanes, signalling, or yielding to outer traffic, they would intersect with a car in the outer lane innocently heading to the second exit.
In practice, people are not able to navigate two-lane roundabouts in a compliant and safe manner. Any intersection of roads busy enough to have two lanes in each direction is too busy for a roundabout to be safe.
Re: Safety benefits of roundabouts
#194I could see how these have benefits in some cases. There are also drawbacks… the uncertainty of who is yielding (except maybe by AI). What about snow and ice? If you do some searching there are plenty of reasons why you might not want roundabouts.
> the uncertainty of who is yielding
Same we know red light means stop. You make up a rule.
In Australia anyone from the right has right of way.
Re: Safety benefits of roundabouts
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
Traffic calming features: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_calming
We have lots of these little roundabouts in Portland (not to mention all manner of other traffic calming features), and they are generally well placed. Almost exclusively used in areas with heavy bike and pedestrian traffic, where cars would otherwise be incentivized to speed and bypass heavy traffic on nearby arterials and busy commute routes.
Yeah I’m down with traffic calming measures. The issue is people treat them as actual roundabouts and instead of turning left say they drive around the circle. And they’re so convinced they’re right they will actually road rage if you properly turn at the circle without going around. Many vehicles are incapable of making the roundabout properly and run up on the curbs etc damaging the cars and the curbs and endanger people waiting at the corner to cross.
The feature itself is fine by me, but the issue is it confuses people because it’s too similar to a roundabout.
Re: Safety benefits of roundabouts
#196Ctrl+f "pedestrian" Only one result and it's not even about roundabouts. This is how American traffic engineering is done.
It seems that a lot of American traffic engineering is about increasing automobile throughput at the expense of all other factors. Safety, expense, even how economically productive the street is in terms of supporting businesses and housing.
Re: Safety benefits of roundabouts
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
Transportation engineer here: Multi-lane roundabouts don't typically have any safety benefits. Single lane roundabouts do. Also, on the small side where you have traffic circles rather than roundabouts, those also suck.
I think you're right about single vs. 2+ lanes. It doesn't matter how many diagram signs they put up before the roundabout entry, people will NOT understand a roundabout with more than one lane, and under no circumstance will people going straight through realize they have to yield to someone coming from the opposite side who's going 270° around the circle and exiting from the inner lane. Roundabouts are fine if the…
Where I’m from, every driver knows how to use these and use them safely.
Re: Safety benefits of roundabouts
#198When my wife and I moved to Bend, Oregon from Italy, I was really shocked to see how much the city had embraced roundabouts. I hadn't expected to see any in the US, let alone more than 20 of them throughout the city.
Not quite sure what the exact history was, but they realized a few years back that they cost less and work pretty well.
Re: Safety benefits of roundabouts
#199This article makes it sound like traffic lights are more common than roundabouts in the US. In Australia, in most small to mid-sized towns I've been to, roundabouts seem to be much more common than traffic lights. Traffic lights are mostly used in densely populated areas (e.g. town/city centers) because roundabouts take up more space.
Re: Safety benefits of roundabouts
#200This article makes it sound like traffic lights are more common than roundabouts in the US. In Australia, in most small to mid-sized towns I've been to, roundabouts seem to be much more common than traffic lights. Traffic lights are mostly used in densely populated areas (e.g. town/city centers) because roundabouts take up more space.
Traffic lights are absolutely more common than roundabouts in the US. Roundabouts are rare, and often come with a 4 way stop in the same place