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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/8705932/Britai...
They seem determined to make the road network in UK lethal and/or unusable. There isn't a single motorway currently operating without some restriction. An entire national road network of B roads.
In towns they are even worse. They make cycle lanes with a couple of few wide left for the car - no you can't drive in the cycle lane (obvs) but you must. They make these deliberately hazardous intersections only to have to dig them up again when they kill some people. They narrow the road to single lane - filling the rest with concrete to create some head-on collisions. They place traffic lights every 50 meters along some sections so that drivers have to pull out in front of oncoming traffic in order to somehow merge into the queue.
This roundabout is a ridiculous demolition derby with minor collisions every single day - you don't even get the plate of the guy that rammed you. I am surprised it is only killing one person every five years - who knows how many injuries there are. Would you cross that roundabout on a bicycle? People - lunatics - do. Most Brit drivers have no clue how to use a regular roundabout never mind this thing.
This mess is a monument to the hubris of Swindon town planners. Swindon is a shitty little provincial country town. It shouldn't really ever have road fatalities or accidents on this scale.
The writer of this article must have had something in order to gush about it. It is utterly beyond me as it is the subject of regular black humor here.
I used to live close enough to this to drive over it occasionally. When it's busy traffic is literally coming at you from three directions, the geometry isn't obvious or intuitive, and none of the usual rules apply. It always had glass from collisions on it.
Roundabouts have an extra mental tax on drivers, something that's often disregarded in this kind of debates. You should be more alert, more aware of your surroundings, decisions are tougher to make (move? or not yet?). This 7-in-1 roundabout seems to be taking that to the extreme. I can imagine how uncomfortable and challenging it must be to cross it, especially for drivers who are not familiar with it. Now compare t…
I used to live close enough to this to drive over it occasionally. When it's busy traffic is literally coming at you from three directions, the geometry isn't obvious or intuitive, and none of the usual rules apply. It always had glass from collisions on it.
Roundabouts have an extra mental tax on drivers, something that's often disregarded in this kind of debates. You should be more alert, more aware of your surroundings, decisions are tougher to make (move? or not yet?). This 7-in-1 roundabout seems to be taking that to the extreme. I can imagine how uncomfortable and challenging it must be to cross it, especially for drivers who are not familiar with it. Now compare t…
I used to live close enough to this to drive over it occasionally. When it's busy traffic is literally coming at you from three directions, the geometry isn't obvious or intuitive, and none of the usual rules apply. It always had glass from collisions on it.
Roundabouts have an extra mental tax on drivers, something that's often disregarded in this kind of debates. You should be more alert, more aware of your surroundings, decisions are tougher to make (move? or not yet?). This 7-in-1 roundabout seems to be taking that to the extreme. I can imagine how uncomfortable and challenging it must be to cross it, especially for drivers who are not familiar with it. Now compare t…
Traffic can only approach you from one direction and traffic on the roundabout has priority, to me it seems much simpler.
Hemel Hempstead, North of London, has an even better one. https://goo.gl/maps/aAq7pzA45eR2 It's actually 6 roundabouts forming a seventh (the Swindon one is only five forming a sixth) and it's also over a waterway. As the taxi drove us through that madness, my boss turned to me and said "okay, you were right, it's best we didn't rent a car and try to drive to ourselves".
It's not the number of roundabouts that makes Swindon hard, it's the number of lanes per junction and the proximity of the spot islands to each other. For reference, Colchester also has a "magic roundabout" with the same structure of Hemel's but Swindon's is easily the worst of the 3 because the whole thing operates as one junction due to how tightly packed the roundabouts are. Whereas Hemel and Colchester can be tre…
A few things about the Magic Roundabout:
If you are a rail user then you will inevitably have rail replacement bus services that will inevitably give you a free tour of the Magic Roundabout. You can get on the top deck at the front and witness the awesomeness of the roundabout precariously but with a good view.
By bicycle the Magic Roundabout is a bit daunting but okay due to the low traffic speed and the expectation of other road users for you to be having no idea what you are doing.
What is not quite ever easy to come to terms with is that you are effectively driving on the right, not the left, as far as on-coming traffic is concerned. This is not normal for UK traffic situations, you always drive on the left in the UK and expect on-coming traffic to be to the right, not left.
Swindon is great, for a while I used to tell people I went there for my shopping because it was the largest town without a bookshop.
I used to live close enough to this to drive over it occasionally. When it's busy traffic is literally coming at you from three directions, the geometry isn't obvious or intuitive, and none of the usual rules apply. It always had glass from collisions on it.
Roundabouts have an extra mental tax on drivers, something that's often disregarded in this kind of debates. You should be more alert, more aware of your surroundings, decisions are tougher to make (move? or not yet?). This 7-in-1 roundabout seems to be taking that to the extreme. I can imagine how uncomfortable and challenging it must be to cross it, especially for drivers who are not familiar with it. Now compare t…
So, just like the rest of driving?
Freeway on-ramps, stop lights, pedestrian crossings, bike lanes, one way street... Lots of things are harder mentally until you learn to get used to them.
Roundabouts force you to slow down, however, which is why I think they get such a big backlash at first. But in reality, when built in the right areas, they improve overall traffic flow.
I used to live close enough to this to drive over it occasionally. When it's busy traffic is literally coming at you from three directions, the geometry isn't obvious or intuitive, and none of the usual rules apply. It always had glass from collisions on it.
Roundabouts have an extra mental tax on drivers, something that's often disregarded in this kind of debates. You should be more alert, more aware of your surroundings, decisions are tougher to make (move? or not yet?). This 7-in-1 roundabout seems to be taking that to the extreme. I can imagine how uncomfortable and challenging it must be to cross it, especially for drivers who are not familiar with it. Now compare t…
Regular intersections with or without traffic lamps have a measurably higher number of incidents and rate of mortal incidents.
Roundabouts have fewer collision points and force drivers into trajectories that lead to less dramatic impacts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundabout#Safety has a very illustrative diagram https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Roundabout_intersection_d... and some cited sources for that claim (claim that fits perfectly with my personal experience living near an urban intersection-turned-roundabout).
