We have a few roundabouts where I live in the USA now, and they are absolutely wonderful, apart from the occasional clueless driver who doesn’t know how to use them, which seem to come in two varieties: 1) blast right into them without yielding or even slowing, or 2) Going the wrong way. In their defense, they probably have never seen them or never learned about them in driving school.
We're excited about our new roundabout
51–60 of 316 posts
Re: We're excited about our new roundabout
#52I live in the US now, but originally from Ireland. My least favourite part of US road infrastructure is the 4 way stop. They are just not good compared to a roundabout. Half the time the only way you can tell it’s an all way stop is by looking for the back of the stop signs on the perpendicular road. With a roundabout, you only have to look in one direction, and if it’s clear, you don’t even have to stop.
That is a good way to have an accident - I know since I've done it. While "looking one way" on a USA counterclockwise roundabout you are looking left to see traffic already on the roundabout and if clear you go and run smack into the back of the vehicle ahead of you who for some reason stalled or hesitated or just judged the traffic differently. However it will be a low speed accident.
Re: We're excited about our new roundabout
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd say just the opposite. Indeed, in the UK it's normal for the signs leading up to a roundabout to include an overhead map view, since that's often the easiest way to understand what you need to do to get where you want to.
I imagine you're referring to a simple line drawing (with labels)?
For example - Britain's most notorious roundabout https://www.google.com/maps/@51.5622263,-1.7713205,3a,48.7y,...
Re: We're excited about our new roundabout
#54I guess that's somewhere quite remote? I don't see any pedestrian infrastructure and I don't understand how a pedestrian would cross this road safely
Re: We're excited about our new roundabout
#55Seattle Department of Transportation and Washington State DOT have honestly gotten way too creative. It's like every city, every locale, and sometimes every street has a new collection of obstacles and rules to circumnavigate. Roundabouts are great, but they should probably be round. In this case, it seems that it'd be easy to navigate if the two roads were brought into a single, simple roundabout intersection like y…
The lack of turn signal usage in the region also makes funky roundabouts much harder to navigate. Like you have to wait until there is a large enough gap in the cars to enter the circle, even if none of the cars actually end up intersecting your path.
Re: We're excited about our new roundabout
#56I live in the US now, but originally from Ireland. My least favourite part of US road infrastructure is the 4 way stop. They are just not good compared to a roundabout. Half the time the only way you can tell it’s an all way stop is by looking for the back of the stop signs on the perpendicular road. With a roundabout, you only have to look in one direction, and if it’s clear, you don’t even have to stop.
Yep. Canada suburbs here. We're starting to see roundabouts used more often for what would be higher traffic four-ways or inconvenient lights. They're great, both as a driver and as a cyclist. Lower conflict risk, simple rules to proceed.
IMO all smaller 4 way stops should become what I've described as trash can roundabouts. Small island to circle around. So much better than stop signs.
Re: We're excited about our new roundabout
#57Whats not mentioned in the article is that this particular intersection has a
(15mph residential access road - top right) (25 mph farmland road - bottom) (50mph country highway - left and right)
Previously, only drivers from the 15mph and 25mph roads had to stop!
Visibility coming from the south would also be terrible to check for incoming highway drivers (left is blocked by foliage, right the road curves out of sight), so getting the highway drivers to slow down is a welcome improvement here.
There is also not enough space to add at the intersection here either, its seemingly bordered entirely by private land.
Re: We're excited about our new roundabout
#58Apparently I'm sticking my neck out here, but it really doesn't seem that hard. Overhead, I can intuit the path I would take, and if I imagine it first-person, it seems even more obvious. It's frustrating riding with certain other American drivers in other countries. I've met numerous folks now that seem upset that they have to actually pay attention to their driving and the traffic. Meanwhile I'm horrified that they…
I'll take a traditional cross with traffic signals or stop signs on all sides, it's simple and effective. Roundabouts are a waste of space, disrupt traffic, and take more brain processing than I care to afford if I can help it. This particular example isn't even round.
Your opinion here is at odds with the record for higher traffic throughput and better safety for roundabouts. They are better in pretty much every way, for appropriate situations.
Here the situation is uneven road size, through traffic on the highway and odd angles. Perfect roundabout application.
Re: We're excited about our new roundabout
#59I fail to see how this helps over more traditional designs. Not to mention tight roundabouts always have horrible curbs that trucks have to smash into to try and jump over to make the turns, and they are never gentle bumps, they are always tire and curb damaging trash, especially for heavy loads which are primarily the vehicles that need to jump the curbs. All the roundabouts around me I wish they would just get rid…
> Not to mention tight roundabouts always have horrible curbs that trucks have to smash into to try and jump over to make the turns, and they are never gentle bumps, they are always tire and curb damaging trash, especially for heavy loads which are primarily the vehicles that need to jump the curbs.
I'm not a fan of roundabouts, but the recent WSDOT roundabouts I'm subjected to have gentle curbs, at least for now, so that part isn't so bad. The part where I actually need to look left and right simultaneously to see if there's room for me to join the flow, and also watch for pedestrians (if present) isn't so great.
And I'm really not a fan of the unbounded wait when there is a large flow that crosses my entrance, which could result in a very long wait when the large flow comes from rush hour conditions or a ferry offloading.
Re: We're excited about our new roundabout
#60One area where a 4-way stop sign intersection is somewhat superior to a roundabout is the notion of taking turns -- in the States it seems like busy roundabouts are an opportunity for one stream of traffic to just plow through, completely ignoring everyone else who also has something better to do than sit around waiting for others to be courteous :)