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Safety benefits of roundabouts

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Re: Safety benefits of roundabouts

#231

Post by trevyn »

peeters wrote: post #177
smeej wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> expecting anything more than that from most drivers is a lost cause I can't speak to the area you live, but where I'm from we get along just fine. Yes sometimes you still get the odd unfamiliar driver that doesn't understand them, but for locals there's a critical mass where roundabouts stop being avoidable and you adjust. See also: https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/safety-at-two-lane-roundabo...

Are you from Stockholm?

Re: Safety benefits of roundabouts

#232

Post by saltharp »

I’m an Australian who has spent a number of years living in the US, and to be honest I’m not sure roundabouts are that great anymore.

Roundabouts might be more efficient for pushing cars through an intersection, but they’re less pedestrian-friendly. Yes that’s right, in this specific case, American cities are more pedestrian friendly than Australian and European cities. At best, a pedestrian has to take an awkward circular detour with a roundabout, and most Australian roundabouts DON’T have a zebra crossing like the picture in the article - so unlike a four way stop, pedestrians don’t have the right of way. If they did, it would likely destroy a lot of the (car-only) efficiency gains in busy areas.

The other benefit of the four way stop is that every American just knows what to do when the traffic lights fail, since the rules fall back to the four way stop rules. In Australia, this can be a very dangerous situation until the cops arrive to direct traffic.

(For the Australians who don’t know how to navigate a four way stop: you arrive at an intersection where all four entrances have a stop sign, so you stop, and then go through in the order that you arrived)

Re: Safety benefits of roundabouts

#233

Post by ehnto »

rcpt wrote: post #180

Ctrl+f "pedestrian" Only one result and it's not even about roundabouts. This is how American traffic engineering is done.

Australia does well, but not everywhere. We also had our few decades of automania, that saw our tram lines ripped up in the burbs, and sprawl reach outward with highways. I had to battle this old auto-topian design this week in order to take my car to a mechanic, ironically.

There is a train station about 500 meters behind the workshop, as the crow flies. I thought I would just drop my car off, walk to the train, head into the city.

It took 45 minutes of detours and a lot of sketchy sections to actually get to the train station. Lucky to have the suburban train for sure, but this particular old suburb had assumed everyone was in a car, and it simply hasn't put in the work to make it traversable to pedestrians. No sidewalks, lots of dead end roads and uneccessary fences. At one point I was staring at the station, with no way to get to it. Looong impermeable business parks etc. I just wasn't meant to be there by design.

Re: Safety benefits of roundabouts

#234

Post by bogantech »

saltharp wrote: post #232

I’m an Australian who has spent a number of years living in the US, and to be honest I’m not sure roundabouts are that great anymore. Roundabouts might be more efficient for pushing cars through an intersection, but they’re less pedestrian-friendly. Yes that’s right, in this specific case, American cities are more pedestrian friendly than Australian and European cities. At best, a pedestrian has to take an awkward ci…

> most Australian roundabouts DON’T have a zebra crossing like the picture in the article

This is a planning issue not a roundabout issue

Re: Safety benefits of roundabouts

#235

Post by xboxnolifes »

adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #203
lobochrome wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is your argument that roundabouts are bad for pedestrians? If so why?

The lack of lights and increase in number of crossings (for non-tiny ones) make them pretty terrible to cross as a pedestrian.

No reason roundabout entrances/exits cannot be properly sized to reduce pedestrian crossing distance. There's also nothing stopping us from adding yield lights when pedestrians are detected. Poorly designed roundabouts and intersections are terrible, yes, but they don't have to be.

Re: Safety benefits of roundabouts

#236

Post by ChoHag »

saltharp wrote: post #232

I’m an Australian who has spent a number of years living in the US, and to be honest I’m not sure roundabouts are that great anymore. Roundabouts might be more efficient for pushing cars through an intersection, but they’re less pedestrian-friendly. Yes that’s right, in this specific case, American cities are more pedestrian friendly than Australian and European cities. At best, a pedestrian has to take an awkward ci…

[dead]

Re: Safety benefits of roundabouts

#237

Post by vladvasiliu »

saltharp wrote: post #232

I’m an Australian who has spent a number of years living in the US, and to be honest I’m not sure roundabouts are that great anymore. Roundabouts might be more efficient for pushing cars through an intersection, but they’re less pedestrian-friendly. Yes that’s right, in this specific case, American cities are more pedestrian friendly than Australian and European cities. At best, a pedestrian has to take an awkward ci…

> If they did, it would likely destroy a lot of the (car-only) efficiency gains in busy areas.

Have you been to Paris? Not only do pedestrians here have to take detours, but it's a royal PITA for the car traffic, too! Who says you can't have it all?

There seemingly are roundabouts all over the place. But, on closer inspection, those actually aren't roundabouts, but "circular intersections". Cars inside in the circle must yield to those coming in. Combine this brain-dead rule with the fact that nobody honors the "don't block the intersection" rule, and you get gridlocks all over the place even with light traffic.

Re: Safety benefits of roundabouts

#238

Post by daveoc64 »

Moru wrote: post #218
ajb wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You only need to know one fact to navigate it: the middle is not a roundabout, ignore the fact that it is round. Every driver in the UK is used to sequences of two or three roundabouts, they are part of the driving test. As long as you are not bamboozled by the pseudo roundabout in the middle, you just navigate it based on principles you already know.

As a right hand driver since 40 years I can't wrap my head around the combo roundabouts. I get terrified just looking at youtube drivers trying to explain how they work in England.

From experience, there's a lot of people in the UK that don't truly know what to do at a double mini roundabout.

As other comments have noted, when drivers are less clear on the rules they tend to drive more slowly and cautiously - I think that makes double roundabouts "work out" most of the time.

Re: Safety benefits of roundabouts

#239

Post by switch007 »

Roundabouts also don’t work so well in our ever more narcissistic society due to:

- lack of indicating of taking an exit which which impedes the flow of traffic of the vehicles who thought they had to stop to give way

- blocking entrance to the roundabout when someone’s exit has traffic

- in heavy traffic, aggressively maintaining the normal give way rules instead of doing 1 for 1 for a fairer movement of vehicles

Not that I’m arguing /for/ 4 way stops. I just think roundabouts work pretty well when you abide by the rules and apply some courtesy and respect.

Re: Safety benefits of roundabouts

#240

Post by sfn42 »

kdmccormick wrote: post #209
adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lack of lights and increase in number of crossings (for non-tiny ones) make them pretty terrible to cross as a pedestrian.

(Warning: Anecdata) There was a multi-lane roundabout near me with traffic signals and pedestrian crossing signals and all. It was an absolute nightmare to drive through, bike through, or cross on foot. Cars pressured one another to drive aggressively, pedestrians had to wait for walk signals, cars got confused and blew through the crosswalks by accident even when pedestrians had walk signals, bikes were an afterthou…

I never walk out in front of cars until I have made sure they see me. You never know what's going on with that driver.
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