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Safety benefits of roundabouts

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Re: Safety benefits of roundabouts

#311

Post by dns_snek »

zik wrote: post #224
dtech wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in NL which has a very high number of roundabouts and this is not my experience at all. Granted most have priority pedestrian crossings which people do respects.

It's a documented effect of roundabouts that they tend to result in more pedestrian fatalities than other forms of intersection. But it does depend on the design - it's possible to improve pedestrian safety at the cost of traffic throughput. Guess which choice my country made...

Please share your sources because your claims defy common sense and all data I've seen on the topic.

> Australia: Crash reduction after roundabout installed: 74% in the casualty crash rate; 32% in property damage only; 68% in pedestrian casualty crashes per year.

> Netherlands: crash reduction at roundabouts: 73% in all pedestrian injury crashes; 89 % for pedestrian fatality; 63% for moped injuries; 30% for cycle injuries.

> Germany: a 75% decrease in average vehicle pedestrian crashes for 25 intersections converted from stop signs or traffic signals to roundabouts.

> France: less than 25% of serious injury crashes or fatalities at roundabouts; 38 fatal or serious type injuries for every 100 crashes at roundabouts vs 55 injury or fatal crashes for every 100 crashes at controlled intersections; crash frequencies 4 times higher at signalized intersections than roundabouts.

And more at:

An Overview Of Safety Effects On Pedestrians At Modern Roundabouts @ https://www.witpress.com/elibrary/wit-transactions-on-ecolog...

Re: Safety benefits of roundabouts

#312

Post by walthamstow »

KaiserPro wrote: post #41
hristov wrote: post #20

The greatest thing about roundabouts is that they protect against the idiot that goes through an intersection at full speed. He does that either because he is passed out behind the wheel or because he did not notice a stop sign and thought he had the right of way, or maybe because he just does not care. Well with a roundabout if you just go straight ahead you hit the center circle. Good roundabouts always have a slig…

It certainly has some protection: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTk_kPeA63c (turn the sound off, its just road noise) This is what happens when you go full bore into a big roundabout. This kind of roundabout is used to join one large road to one or more small road (think two lanes going from 6-12 on the clock, with single lane road at 3 & 9) In the UK, we don't normally have stop signs, as most junctions have clear…

> Just don't look up the magic roundabout, thats just fucking batshit, we only have one. The reason why they keep it is because there is literally nothing else interesting about the place.

Hemel, Swindon or England itself?

Re: Safety benefits of roundabouts

#313

Post by CalRobert »

gambiting wrote: post #229
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.

Having lived in Poland for a long time - there's no issue mixing roundabouts and pedestrians, if anything they make is super easy - every exit has its own zebra crossing which means people exiting the roundabout have to stop to let you cross, which actually works well with the inherent design of the roundabout, or for really large ones with multiple lanes you just have lights.

I think the problem is that in America people will drive over you even in a zebra crossing. There are plenty of marked crossings on, say, Santa Monica blvd. but drivers still routinely kill people using them.

Re: Safety benefits of roundabouts

#314

Post by CalRobert »

rapnie wrote: post #242

In the Netherlands we had a huge phase of replacing regular crossings with roundabouts, which I consider to be an improvement. Now, however this is followed by a re-engineering phase of many of these roundabouts. The 2-lane ones, where a driver needs to pre-select whether they want to go a quarter round (turn right in Netherlands) or select for straight-ahead and 3 quarters round. The lanes on these roundabouts are s…

Choice stress is what makes it safe, though. The driver _should_ be a bit stressed. And removing the possibility to change your mind in the roundabout reserves more mental capacity for looking for pedestrians (like me! Hi from Hilversum, which is pretty crappy by Dutch standards but a dream compared to anywhere else I've lived)

Re: Safety benefits of roundabouts

#315

Post by vinay427 »

masklinn wrote: post #295
globular-toast wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever tried to cross one? In the UK pedestrians technically have priority at roundabouts now but this doesn't change anything with basically no drivers giving way (and no enforcement). The best compromise is an underpass for pedestrians but this creates a really confusing layout (you always go the wrong way the first time) and the usual dark/dingy/scary problems with underpasses.

> Have you ever tried to cross one? I do so almost every day. Pretty much every roundabout has marked crossings with islands between the lanes, drivers slow down on entry so easily yield to a pedestrian trying to cross, and the crossing is about a car length out of the roundabout so on exit drivers have the space to both be out of the roundabout and yield to pedestrians. Then again I’m in a country where drivers are…

> Then again I’m in a country where drivers are generally respectful of pedestrians, especially on marked crossings most drivers will actively stop if they see a pedestrian getting close to a crossing.

This seems to not generally be the case in the UK, or at least in any of the large and small cities in England that I’ve spent time in. Except for zebra crossings (which are few and far between at crossings compared to most of Western/Central Europe or even the US/Canada) drivers seem to rarely stop proactively, if ever.

Re: Safety benefits of roundabouts

#316

Post by mrtksn »

pbmonster wrote: post #307
buro9 wrote: post #266

Swindon, UK would like to remind the World that recursive roundabouts are a thing too. https://i.imgur.com/4pMhdMl.gif

How is that a thing? Why not just have a two-lane roundabout with the third lane skipping the roundabout and going to the next exit directly?

According to this video[0], it reduces the fight for space. IIUC, the idea is that this structure allows the flow to avoid the pile ups because you have more than one way to do something and if the one way is too busy you can take the other.

Imagine a single roundabout with large number of lanes that can go just one way or exit the roundabout, then you can easily have a pile up in one exit block the drivers haded to the other exists. However, if the roundabout can go both directions the drivers can go through the other side of the centre.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OGvj7GZSIo

Re: Safety benefits of roundabouts

#318

Post by KaiserPro »

dcminter wrote: post #219
KaiserPro wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It certainly has some protection: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTk_kPeA63c (turn the sound off, its just road noise) This is what happens when you go full bore into a big roundabout. This kind of roundabout is used to join one large road to one or more small road (think two lanes going from 6-12 on the clock, with single lane road at 3 & 9) In the UK, we don't normally have stop signs, as most junctions have clear…

> we only have one Actually there's another in Hemel.

Heavens to betsy, what have we done!?

Re: Safety benefits of roundabouts

#319

Post by saiya-jin »

CalRobert wrote: post #314
rapnie wrote: post #242

In the Netherlands we had a huge phase of replacing regular crossings with roundabouts, which I consider to be an improvement. Now, however this is followed by a re-engineering phase of many of these roundabouts. The 2-lane ones, where a driver needs to pre-select whether they want to go a quarter round (turn right in Netherlands) or select for straight-ahead and 3 quarters round. The lanes on these roundabouts are s…

Choice stress is what makes it safe, though. The driver _should_ be a bit stressed. And removing the possibility to change your mind in the roundabout reserves more mental capacity for looking for pedestrians (like me! Hi from Hilversum, which is pretty crappy by Dutch standards but a dream compared to anywhere else I've lived)

A person more stressed has less mental capacity for everything else including pedestrians, why the heck do I have to explain this to adults? Stress leads to mistakes, every single time, in any activity. Whole sports and strategies are based solely on making competitor more stressed to induce mistakes and lose.

Re: Safety benefits of roundabouts

#320

Post by sfn42 »

devnull3 wrote: post #296
sfn42 wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a big problem to be in the wrong lane. You just change lanes like any other road. And like any other road, when you change lanes, it's your responsibility to make sure the lane you're merging into has space for you.

Driving schools in UK teach that changing lanes on a roundabout is unsafe. Infact, in a driving test doing so will result into a failure because most people will not follow safety checks and signalling. If you are in a wrong lane, the safest thing is to continue on it, exit the roundabout and comeback again or go around the roundabout.

You can't exit from the inner lane without changing lanes.
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