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Kirkland Roundabouts
111–120 of 159 posts
Re: Kirkland Roundabouts
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
They can and do build them. The problem is that at intersections the normative behavior of American drivers is to queue and wait for your turn. Roundabouts assume a different behavior based on jumping the line. Thus there is a lot of unpredictability regarding other drivers due to generations of driving patterns developed in diverse regional driving cultures...many of which are distinctly not-urban. In addition, this…
> The problem is that at intersections the normative behavior of American drivers is to queue and wait for your turn. Roundabouts assume a different behavior based on jumping the line. I don't think it's that different from turning right on red, or left without an arrow, or even merging on to the highway from an onramp (maybe that's the most similar, traffic in the others aren't flowing the same direction as you).
There is a roundabout near me that gets quite low traffic volume. I probably only have to even slow below 20mph about 10% of the time. The bigger risk is that the car in front of me is going to come to a complete stop at the yield sign despite the fact that you can see any potential conflicts at least 100 feet before the roundabout.
American drivers don’t know that a yield doesn’t require a stop and can’t think more than one or two seconds ahead of any possible conflict in traffic.
Re: Kirkland Roundabouts
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
>If you pull in after the car already in the roundabout passes by, you get hit by the next one. Yes, that seems like a roundabout design defect. Seems like the radius of the circle is too large, so cars aren't slowing down enough.
How large is too large? I'm American with a roundabout very close to my house. The inner radius is 10 meters with an island in the middle, and single lanes in all directions. I have witnessed it successfully navigated at well over 100 kph. Also, it's not a speed thing. I've seen this at another roundabout near my house. There's a school dropoff near it, so in the morning traffic backs up through the roundabout onto o…
I guess I'm not a traffic engineer. And there are of course humans-doing-crazy things. But the roundabouts in my neck of the woods are a lot more reasonable. Sure, there is the occasional timid driver who can temporarily gum up the work. I can't say I know if it is the drivers or the roundabout design, or what that would make roundabouts useful in some areas and less useful in others. I bet it would make a good YouTube video if someone were to critique one of the unsuccessful roundabouts (or at least I'd give it a click). And if someone is looking for YouTube video opportunities, it would also be interesting to see how Tesla FSD handles this. Line up 10 or 15 going in one direction, and another 1 or 2 in the perpendicular direction.
Re: Kirkland Roundabouts
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
I live moments away from this roundabout. It's confusing. Single-lane roundabouts are really straightforward. You're either clear to enter, or you're not. Adding lanes makes it far more confusing. I consider myself, you know, pretty smart. Not stupid, at least. But I almost sideswiped someone in this roundabout the other day. Years of driving experience gave me an intuition that the middle lane would not cross over t…
I too live nearby The lanes are quite narrow, and the outer curb is deceptive - there’s a 1” edge with a curved curb behind it making it look wider than it actually is. Scraping along that edge will push cars into the center of the road. There will be a lot of minor accidents here due to the road design. One other second order effect - people are getting used to roundabouts here now, but nearby are ‘traffic circles’…
> People are now ignoring those stop signs (because it’s a roundabout!)
Do you mean they treat it as if they have right-of-way when entering? Because that's also unusual (but not unheard of) in roundabouts.
Re: Kirkland Roundabouts
#115I love this roundabout, we live down the street from it. People around here drive comically bad, mostly from what i suspect is simple inexperience (many new drivers), with a surprising side of entitlement (super rich area). Together, its become my favorite experience to see all the ways people fail to navigate this wild "roundabout". And yet it still mostly works, and is loads faster than the former lights that were…
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Re: Kirkland Roundabouts
#116That combination of soundtrack and graphics reminds me of [1]
Re: Kirkland Roundabouts
#117I'm used to roundabouts but I find the game difficult. Even if you made a basic roundabout I'd still crash a lot.
1) The car wants to go too fast on it's own.
2) The third person perspective is nothing like real driving where you simply yield to traffic on the left (or give way to the left for us down-under folks).
If it's meant to be an argument against roundabouts then it's a straw man.
Re: Kirkland Roundabouts
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
When you’re walking the stop sign stops traffic for you so it’s a lot nicer. I’ve found that even with a marked crosswalk people ignore you if they’re not forced to stop.
I guess jaywalking stuff makes this harder? Because in the UK for example, roundabouts will often be surrounded by marked areas for pedestrians to cross, but they are not proper crossings. You don't have to wait or expect traffic to stop for you, you just walk across when it's clear.
I don't understand your comment.
* Jaywalking makes.. what harder?
* In the UK, roundabouts are marked with areas for pedestrians to cross but they are not crossings? What are they, then?
* You don't have to wait
* But also you can't expect traffic to stop for you
* What do you do if it does not become clear?
Re: Kirkland Roundabouts
#119Roundabouts are almost always a bad idea. Thank God they are mostly a European thing.
Four way stops that require all traffic to stop for no particular reason are always a bad idea. They're a waste of time and resources.
Two way stops are OFTEN a bad idea, because they require two directions of travel to stop for _sometimes_ no particular reason. (And then they often cannot go without an extensive wait).
Re: Kirkland Roundabouts
#120What's particularly crazy about this interchange is that there is going to be a second, elevated peanut roundabout that's rotated 90 degrees, for buses to use: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg...
The buses will at least have an easier time, they should be all trained for how to navigate it if it's on their route, and there's much less traffic on the bus-only part.