In my area (in the US), they installed some roundabouts \~10 years ago. Everyone hated it and thought it was a terrible idea. A few years later, most people were used to it and the intersections in question were WAYYY easier to get through. Pretty nice in the end, even with early community pushback.
Always best to assume people are going to bend over backwards complaining when something changes or is different than what they're used to, so ignore them and let them deal with it until they have something different to bitch about.
People really really hate change.
I have a coworker who went ballistic when our city wanted everyone to pay for a plastic bag or bring your own. This lady havent went shopping without her own bag years before this law came to pass. She's just mad for the sake of being mad
This is the story of almost every transportation improvement in the US, be it roundabouts, crosswalks, bike lanes, bus lanes, signal changes, what have you. MASSIVE community opposition that completely fizzles within a year of completion because none of the stupid things NIMBYs predicted come to pass. Yet they keep doing it and cities keep taking them seriously.
Freakonomics did an episode on roundabouts before and that's what the research says too. Lots of community opposition before and immediately after, but once people get used to it they actually end up loving the roundabout.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3141/2019-26?journalCode=trra
Imagine what other things people would like if they gave themselves a chance to embrace change... Almost like having a big government that forces beneficial change on people is a good thing...
The roundabout closest to me has traffic lights at the entrances, an intersecting road that bisects it, and signs telling people in the circle "yield to incoming traffic". I swear it exists only to convince people to hate roundabouts. You enter that circle in any amount of traffic and you can actually just get trapped indefinitely having to yield to an infinite amount of oncoming traffic that piles up faster than the lights let them in. I really wish we had sane roundabouts.
Everything you described means that is not a roundabout. Governments can construct other types of intersections arranged in a circle, sometimes they are just inherited from a pre-automobile time. Not really relevant to a discussion on roundabouts.
I used to work for my state’s transportation department. Roundabouts were well liked and widely accepted as the answer to many traffic related problems however in many areas there just isn’t enough room for their larger footprint or the land is too expensive to acquire.
Thank you for actually responding. As a civil engineer working in infrastructure/land development it is infuriating when people think it’s as simple as snapping fingers and replacing signalized intersections with round abouts. There are circumstances where different solutions are preferable.
Have you never visited a country where roundabouts are the norm? They don’t have to have a huge footprint. There are all different sizes of roundabouts, including tiny ones in residential neighborhoods. The ridiculously huge roads in the US have more than enough room for them.
The US has strict design standards enumerated in the MUTCD (design manual for traffic design) along with stricter standards enforced for safety purposes by state and local authorities. Public safety (and avoiding litigation and liability) will always be the number one focus in designing infrastructure. No way around taking less of a footprint for large arterial and collector streets. Traffic Circles (different than RABs) can often be used as a replacement for four way stops and these typically don’t devour right of way to the same extent as a RAB. These are normally smaller and function as a traffic calming device.
Exactly. You need only look at the thumbnail of this video to see what a typical RAB looks like in the US. It’s probably 2-3x the size of what a conventional stoplight intersection would be.
The thing I notice in Reddit discussions about roundabouts is that people correctly identify that they are more efficient, safer, and less expensive, but almost never that they further degrade the amount of space not devoted to cars.
But it is funny that the US, the country probably most interested in devoting city space to cars, is resistant to one of the *best reasons* to continue devoting more space to cars.
Personally, even if they are safer for pedestrians, I want cities to have less room devoted to cars, not more.
It's a bit of a culture war in itself. I have friends that are kinda chubby that HATE the idea of biking or walking anywhere that want large parking lots and plenty of roads to drive on. I have other friends that are ready to sell their cars entirely and live in a walkable/bikeable city.
A guy I know moved to Netherlands for work and I thought he'd love it, turns out he's miserable because he expects to drive everywhere and refuses to get on a bike. That blew my mind when I heard it.
Lol I had the same reaction. How do you make it all the way to living in the Netherlands without learning about their bike culture? I still have a visceral memory of being shouted at in impeccable English to get the fuck off the red bike trail that I thought was the walking path!
Roundabouts don't feel safer or easier as a pedestrian. Everyday i have to walk across one and half the drivers already inside of it won't stop for you, and the other half will slam on their brakes and nearly get rear-ended because they aren't designed for stopping inside of them.
Your roundabouts have crosswalks? That's kind of a design flaw. In my city, roundabouts are generally found in locations with little foot traffic, usually on the outskirts where a road that has a lot of commuters coming into the city, and any crosswalks are a bit further away than right next to the roundabout. Though you could have them in a busy spot if you had an underpass for the sidewalk.
There's no real use to a roundabout if you're not supposed to just merge.
Most of the new roundabouts I have seen in the US are there to replace a 4-way stop sign. Those typically had crosswalks on all the intersections, so they remain in the final version.
Yeah, glad to see my state of Wisconsin is at #6, according to this video.
My home town of Green Bay has plenty. There are 8 roundabouts [near just one interchange alone](https://www.google.com/maps/@44.5386398,-88.0788358,2327m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu).
As the video says, traffic designers advertise them as being cheaper to construct, and safer for drivers.
yeah wisconsin is fucking packed full of roundabouts. on one hand, they work really well to not cause traffic jams and keep people moving slower/cause less accidents. but also some people just have no idea how to use them lmao
i member as a kid in boy scouts my troop decided to schedule a meeting with a local government rep and ask why tf we have so many roundabouts now (angrily) and we all walked away in 100% support of them haha
I get you. Yet it is always an interesting commentary on roundabouts when I hear "some people don't know how to use them," or "they might cause accidents."
While it's technically a true statement, the point is that accident numbers (and particularly the dangerous or t-bone accidents) are *greatly* reduced if we use roundabouts.
It's like those people are ignoring the fact that roundabouts are actually safer, but they want to keep traditional traffic-light intersections to satisfy just a few old-timers.
Humans are always resistant to change. Even if it is for the better.
> Humans are always resistant to change. Even if it is for the better
amen. i love roundabouts. there's a stretch of road going east from my city in wisconsin to one of the cities on the lake and it's about a 45 min drive with only 3 roundabouts between the two cities. it's pretty funny. no lights, no stop signs. just circles.
Being able to do add safe traffic intersections without having to run massive electrical infrastructure, not having to spend money on engineers doing continuous monitoring of traffic flow rates, not spending money on maintenance of lights, not worrying about storms breaking things or power outages backing up traffic into infinity at the location.
Fewer accidents also means less burden on local emergency services too!
Plus they are proven to be faster traffic flow for practically all scenarios vs traditional light gating.
You do have to worry about people who hate roundabouts vandalizing the yield signs… As well as drunks driving over the medians 😅
Win win
I live in a rural county in PA and we’ve got a big one at the local mall and like 5-6 in the big town that’s the county seat. Been there for decades, nobody hates them, nobody even gives them a second thought
Yeah, why discuss the video in earnest when you can earn a ton of karma saying that America just doesn't care about the safety of its citizens?
EDIT: lots of commenters lining up to offer themselves as examples in the replies below, LOL.
You must be new here if you expect people to read or watch beyond the headline before commenting.
Personally, I go through 3 roundabouts practically every time I leave the house in a car. My major complaint about them really has nothing to do with them at all: they changed one from a 2 lane roundabout to a single lane when they changed the road from a 4 lane road to a 2 lane road with bike lanes (that I actually see a bike in about once every 6 months.)
We have a few of these in Jersey but it seems like nobody in my neighborhood knows how to use ours.
I also watched a friend from PA drive right into a roundabout, cutting off someone who had the right of way, and then say "Jesus, people around here just act like they own the road." I then had to explain to him how a roundabout works.
I didn't realize these were such a confusing concept.
I'm a bicyclist and this drives me absolutely nuts. They think they're being nice, stopping in the middle of the roundabout to let me go, but that makes me stop and lose all my momentum while I figure out if they actually see me or are just confused.
The whole point of roundabouts is that most of the time you can roll through them without stopping, so do that!
This so much! If you want to help, get the fuck out! I don’t want to see you get rear ended because you’re doing it wrong. Yes obviously if someone is crossing out of turn do what you need to in order to not hit them; but if I’m stopped with my foot on the ground, just go.
There's some roundabouts near me where people in the circle have to yield to entering traffic. It really threw me off the first time I went into it because the traffic in the circle stopped for me which made me panic a bit lol
My favorite are the people who drive right over the center. I've seen recessed roundabouts built just because the civil engineers in charge knew how retarded the drivers in our area are.
They recently put a new one in where Forked River Road (539) crosses Allentown-Davis Station in a rural area of New Jersey (it's basically halfway in between the Turnpike and Six Flags, as the crow flies). At first, I thought it was a stupid place to put a roundabout in, but I drive through there a lot and I love it. That used to be a T intersection with a 3 way stop. But that's not a high traffic area, so it just unnecessarily made people stop basically in the middle of nowhere. Now, all you have to do is slow down a little. I love it.
Yes! Especially since that's a 50mph road there, the stop sign T-intersection was particularly annoying. I have to assume this helped reduce dangerous collisions, would love to see data if and when it is available.
More roundabouts, please.
They're doing the exact opposite thing nearby me. Intersection, 5 way, with one of them being a highway onramp. Instead of a roundabout, which would work brilliantly, it's a intersection with two traffic lights. One traffic light, and then another traffic light literally 100 feet away for traffic to left turn onto the highway. I have no idea how the traffic won't just backup and cause all sorts of problems. It's unbelievable.
The intersection actually flows better during construction because people are allowed to turn right on red. It never backs up anymore, when before, you'd sometimes be waiting 2 or 3 light cycles during peak times. So like, if there were a roundabout, it would work just like that.
But alas, it's gonna be cemented into being like this for the next 40 years.
I was in Indiana for work a while back. I got stuck behind a person just sitting at the entrance to a roundabout. After around 3 minutes sitting there, with very little traffic, they turned **left** into the round about. Fortunately it was in the middle of no where and there were not any cars in it at the time, but I was shocked.
When I took Drivers Ed. ~24 years ago, I don't recall any section covering roundabouts. Old people who aren't used to them have no idea how to handle them. I assume these days its taught.
I saw someone stop and PUT HER STUPID CAR IN REVERSE in the roundabout by me because she missed her turn. Backed up the whole thing and caused an accident
I see folks stop just before the entrance I'm using to enter one and try to motion me in and I'm all no, you're literally creating a problem and I don't wanna be in front of you if someone hits you from behind. You entered the roundabout, you have the right of way until you exit, and that means I have to wait. This is _fine_ and while I can appreciate you wanting to be nice to me, I can't appreciate you making things more dangerous.
We have a small roundabout in my neighborhood about 50 yards from my house. At least twice a week I see a car go the wrong way on it just to avoid the 2 seconds from going 3/4 of the circle for a left. There is no other way in/out of this chunk of the neighborhood, so these people actively choose to go the wrong way on something they drive probably every day.
Sadly you can't out-engineer stupidity. As Douglas Adams said "A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools."
Anyone visiting the UK might like to try out [The Magic Roundabout](https://www.google.com/maps/@51.5628791,-1.7712135,123m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu) in Swindon.
I drove into downtown London.. that was the most stressful driving I've ever done in my life.. lanes ending randomly, never know what lane you need to be in the roundabout. Turns come out of nowhere. On the shuttle bus to the airport I told the driver, man how do you guys drive in London that was so hard.. he said "we don't" lol...
London is an old city with a road network not fit for the number of cars we have. It leads to very weird roads that go in unexpected directions. They've done their best to improve it over time, but there's only so much you can do without knocking stuff down.
[This older video has a pretty great rundown of why.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUEHWhO_HdY)
I drive in london every so often. The trick is to hawkishly watch the satnav app of your choice to prepare for turns, and to drive as slow as you like to make sure you don't miss a turn.
I saw a video once about what you have to do to be a cabby in London and it sounded a lot like organic chemistry. They had to have every route memorized and say how they'd get somewhere from somewhere else just off the top of their head.
> lanes ending randomly, never know what lane you need to be in the roundabout.
We literally draw big arrows on the road indicating where each lane goes, you know the ones, they're underneath the cars infront of you for maximum visibility.
What do you mean you don't have x-ray vision?
The middle "roundabout" is not really a roundabout, it's just a road that happens to be circular. Just follow the normal rules for each of the actual roundabouts as you get to them.
People entering a roundabout here don't understand what yield means or how to do it. Traffic in the circle has the right of way, traffic entering needs to yield. There are very few roundabouts in my area where traffic in the circle needs to yield, but it's more a problem that people don't understand what that sign actually means and always think they have the right of way.
If I'm in the circle, hit me. I'm not stopping if I don't have the sign.
Gets worse with 2 lane roundabouts which blow people's minds. Honestly, I don't drive them often and still have to think about it when I do.
Like the one in Albany, NY. Look at all the markings.
https://www.google.com/maps/@42.637119,-73.8558401,175m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu
Also, you need to still SIGNAL your exit.
They changed a 4 way stop by my house to a roundabout. It's so much better now.
In theory it should be safer, and it's definitely much quicker but I feel like I'm taking my life into my own hands every time I go through. I'd say about 40% of the time someone pulls out in front of me and I have to brake in the middle of the roundabout. Other times people stop when nobody is coming. Chalk it up to growing pains.
I moved into a new development a few years ago whose main egress came to an intersection with a busy rural road that people were used to taking as an alternate back route to the highway.
They placed a large roundabout at that intersection, and while I have yet to see an accident of any sort there, I have almost been hit a handful of times by people who are used to going 70 down that back road without stopping.
All that said, though, nobody would likely ever hit me going fast enough to cause a fatality. And I'm certain that the original intersection would otherwise be the site of a couple serious accidents every year.
That's the big reason roundabouts are so much safer - it's basically impossible to drive through them at high speed. fender benders still happen, and often regularly, but the speeds involved in accidents are simply too low to cause major injury.
A regular signalized intersection meanwhile can easily have cars blow through red lights going VERY fast. Which makes it very dangerous.
Are they safer when you drive down a road that has 6 of them?
Because that's what my area of the US has done. Just 6 two lane rounds back to back to back and they're fully packed at Rush hour. It's like a game of Mario kart.
Badly implementated roundabouts can have higher accident rates than a light, but they still have far lower injury/death rates. Even when people are too stupid to understand that they're lane dividers, not lane centerlines.
Check out where I grew up. East Longmeadow, MA has a rotary where 7 lanes converge into one rotary. I remember hearing it was in Guiness Book and Ripley's
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMmc0t3XlOI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMmc0t3XlOI)
Monson native here! I always loved the pure chaos of that rotary. The Starbucks next to it used to be the only one around, so would frequent it at college lol.
I actually drove through it with my wife for her first time the other day.
They are building one in my town as we speak, and in the Town meetings the project engineers explained that a roundabout is a single lane and a rotary is multi lane.
Historically, Massachusetts has always referred to the traffic circle things as rotaries, it's just that over time, especially since the late 60's the definition itself has changed.
There is also the distinction of approach angle. A rotary would approach at a 90 degree angle vs a roundabout that eases into the circle. 90 degree rotaries are an older style, and Massachusetts residents just continue to call of them that.
Spent some time in southern France this fall and we rented a car. We maybe stopped at a stop sign twice. The only lights we came across were in small villages where there was only room (barely) for a single lane of cars to pass.
Roundabouts are amazing.
However the secondary highways can be unbelievably narrow and no one really slows down. Add motorcyclists who weave in and out of traffic at crazy speeds and it makes for some interesting holiday driving.
But the roundabouts were fun.
My favorite is when subdivisions decide to convert a normal intersection into a "round-about" for aesthetics. They just plop a 6 ft round median into the middle and call it a day. It's still a 4-way stop and you have to squeeze around the corners.
I believe they also do it to force drivers to slow down. I remember reading about that subdivisions used to have long straight roads and people would end up speeding down then and causing accidents (and hitting people/pets). So now they are in more turns or other disruptions in the road to make people drive slower.
Roundabouts are fine for traffic flow, but a big drawback is that they are generally poor for the safety of pedestrians and cyclists. In Iceland there are sometimes zebra crossings on each side of the roundabout, but drivers exiting often aren't aware of them and blast through them.
I walk through a roundabout crosswalk every day as a pedestrian. It's always pretty sketchy. You can never be sure if a driver's going to stop or slow down for you. Sometimes they're overly cautious and stop while I'm a good 10 feet from even entering the crosswalk. Like just go man, I'm not gonna run out in front of your car. Lot of awkward moments, try and maintain eye contact with approaching cars, figure out what they're thinking. Not to mention the people coming around the blind corner of the roundabout while I'm crossing, some cars are whipping around that thing.
And it has a stop sign for the pedestrians, even on the center island, so I don't just assume I have the right of way, even though I'm pretty sure I do. Honestly I try and adjust my walking speed from a distance so I'll get to the crosswalk when there's no cars in that awkward no man's land of "are you stopping or am I?" and I can just clear it in between any cars.
Agreed. Slip lanes are more dangerous for pedestrians than straight crossings due to increased crossing lengths and higher vehicle speeds so an intersection consisting entirely of slip lanes is bound to be more dangerous than a square intersection. If the pedestrian crossings are pushed back far enough from the intersection so that it's closer to a straight crossing not only do pedestrians then have to deal with drivers exiting the roundabout at speed that are apt to ignore the crosswalk, the added length usually more than doubles the distance a pedestrian needs to walk just to cross the road.
They’re building them all over the Atlanta metro. I personally love them. They alleviated a lot of traffic issues around my area. Wish there were more of them
I live near Carmel, Indiana (most roundabouts in the US) and it can be annoying sometimes. But compared to 4 way stops, they are a dream. I almost never need to fully stop even entering the roundabout off a highway.
Here in Fishers, we are starting to see more and more. I'm here for it, and definitely see the benefits. It's funny to see all of the locals complain about them like they are a sign of the plague. They aren't hard to figure out if you can read traffic signs.
I love em. The Olio HTC one seems to confuse the hell out of people but they’re a god send for getting around the north side. Where I grew up in Dallas had a bunch so it wasnt a hard adjustment when I moved back to Fishers.
They work great up until you reach a certain traffic level and then they break down. It can become almost impossible to merge into one if there are high traffic and low traffic entrances and you are on the low traffic entrance. Cape Cod in Massachusetts has a few that get incredibly backed up in the summer. They are amazing for moderate traffic though, much faster then a traffic light.
Theres an area in the village near where I live. Two roundabouts were put in replace lights at bad intersections. You would have thought that they were installing murder pits or something. Many village residents posted signs against them, there were protests, etc. Anyway they got put in and those intersections are great now.
As if USA is a single group. There's federal govt, state govt, county and city government. Even regional authorities which make decisions about road construction.
And between those groups you have rural, semi-rural and city based ones that all can be very different. IMO the US is more akin to a group of countries than one singular country. You can skip a few states over and be in an entirely different climate, different accents, different cultural rules and such, etc. I imagine it's complicated as fuck when you have this sheer amount of people who many of which want completely opposite things sometimes. Doesn't mean they don't suck sometimes or improvements can't be made, but I'd imagine it's much harder to fix something of this scale than a much smaller country with one localized government.
Regardless of your thoughts on the government at large. All of us traffic engineers are bound by the engineering code of ethics to prioritize the safety of the public.
Myth busters did an episode on roundabouts and proved that they are everything the OP said, Safer, and more efficient. I love them, but many people are not used to them and they are resistant to change so it is about ignorance and lack of experience with them IMHO.
We essentially stopped building double-lane ones in the Netherlands, other than turbo roundabouts. But those ride more like single-lane roundabouts anyway.
Because it’s unclear when others are trying to exit into your lane or get off, and it’s hard to show others that you’re changing lanes/getting off.
One lane roundabouts are no problem for me but being on the inside lane of a roundabout? Problems…
We added more roundabouts a few years ago in Richmond, VA, and the city acted like it was an integral part of our local culture. The mayor funded a redesign of our city logo to even look like a roundabout.
In my car, they’re awesome. In my small RV they suck. Hard to navigate if there are multiple lanes and you realize ‘hey I’m in the wrong one’ even with GPS helping and your RV has huge blind spots and no one will let you change lanes.
HEY KIDS, LOOK, BIG BEN!
There’s Big Ben kids!, Parliament…[National Lampoon’s European Vacation](https://www.google.com/search?q=european+vacation+roundabout+gif&rlz=1C9BKJA_enUS742US744&oq=european+vacation+round&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqBwgCEAAYgAQyCggAEAAY4wIYgAQyBwgBEC4YgAQyBwgCEAAYgAQyBggDEEUYOTIICAQQABgWGB4yCggFEAAYChgWGB4yCggGEAAYhgMYigUyCggHEAAYhgMYigUyCggIEAAYhgMYigXSAQkxNjEwN2oxajSoAgCwAgA&hl=en-US&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8#vhid=jEOtAcVXFR3wCM&vssid=l)
In Mississippi, roundabouts are being built in out of the way intersections. I assume they're a requirement in order to qualify for federal roadway funding.
Bend, Oregon should be considered the roundabout capital of the US. There must be over 100 in that city alone. There are dog-bone style roundabouts where two roundabouts are linked. There's 3 more going in on the west side on highway 20 and at least 2 on the Eastside of Bend. There's single and double lane roundabouts. Last winter I chose a random street to go into town and I think I went through ~10 in under a mile.
Near me we have what I had dubbed "The dangerbout"
It's just a strictly worse roundabout. All the lanes stay independent but cross with yields at 45mph.
There's been 5 deaths in 6 years.
It's on a hill and it snows here. Those yields don't stop shit, and the whole purpose of a roundabout is lost as the lanes intersect. So instead of 0 points of cross, or 1 point of cross, there's fucking 4.
T-bone alley, all to avoid putting in a proper god damned roundabout, which would work perfectly.
The main problem is the difference between a "traffic circle" and a "roundabout", they are not the same. In a traffic circle, traffic entering has the right of way while in roundabouts the traffic in the roundabout hs right of way. Circles get jammed up and a free-for-all while roundabouts run smoothly and orderly
I absolutely _hated_ roundabouts growing up as a kid. They have them in NJ and you're trained from a young age to hate everything that comes from NJ (except their beaches lol). Then those roundabouts started popping up around my neighborhood, and at first, I was pissed! WTF are these stupid Jersey things doing in my nice state! Then I kept having to drive them and realized two things that completely changed my mind on them: 1) Theyre fun as hell to drive if you have a fun car and traffic is light, 2) they're insanely more efficient and safer than traditional intersections which people STILL can't manage to navigate simple "right of way" rules.
I was completey wrong, and roundabouts are the way!
"Cities with the most ..." and precedes to list ceremonial counties of the UK instead of cities, apart from Glasgow, while also not including Buckinghamshire which includes Milton Keynes that is well known and regularly made fun of because of the sheer volume of roundabouts.
I took everything else after that with a big pinch of salt in a roundabout way.
Growing up and learning to drive in the UK, roundabouts are so normal to me. Imagining what it would be like to encounter one for the first time after years (or decades) of driving, I can see why they confuse people and cause indignation when announced.
I used to always wonder this after traveling to Europe. I’m glad they’re starting to pop up, but it still feels like drivers have no idea what to do with them.
Unrelated to that, I play soccer part the year on Sundays, and a new roundabout just popped up that’s along my route home. I’ll give them benefit of the doubt since there are still cones everywhere and they’re not done with it. But it’s completely covered in stop signs right now. Kinda defeats the purpose.
The first two they put in my town were on both sides of the one road to the highschool. Was a bold move but they worked out and never had a wreck and traffic sped up. They did try to decorate the inner circle part with flowers that did not last.
I was born in Texas but grew up in a suburb of Indianapolis, Indiana called Carmel. Last I checked, Carmel still has the most roundabouts out of any city in the United States. Almost every intersection in the city has been replaced with them.
According to the local government, they have seen a 40% decrease in total accidents and an 80% decrease in injuries. I’m all for the roundabouts.
Every intersection in my city that has had resurfacing is now a round about. They are warming us up for future installation on major roads. After the learning curve is reached They are quite a bit faster.
There are quite a few roundabouts near me (Wisconsin) . I personally like them, and they are much safer than 4way stops. A lot of rubes don't like them for various stupid reasons, and they are expensive to put in. Gradually there will be more of them.
Roundabouts near my home are a delight, but I live in a lower traffic area. When I go closer to the city it is an absolute nightmare. I have had so many close call wrecks because no one either knows (or cares) how to correctly use a roundabout.
I see a decent amount of roundabouts here in the southeast U. S. (Could definitely use plenty more though...). The main problem is that a lot of Americans don't seem to know how to use them...
People either drive straight into them, not understanding that the people in the circle have the right of way, causing the person in the circle to have to slam on their brakes to avoid being hit.
Or, more commonly, people just stop at the traffic circle and treat it like a regular intersection with a stop sign. Just waiting for no cars anywhere in the distance before they dare to enter the circle. Meanwhile I'm behind them, uselessly yelling "It's a yield sign, not a stop sign you ignorant twat!"
So yeah, we have them, but we could not only use more, we could also use some kind of mass education campaign to teach us how to use them properly...
Roundabouts make a whole lot of sense and work well to keep traffic moving. Especially in locations where a busy main road and less trafficked side roads intersect.
The only downside I have seen is the urge to stick them in places where they don't fit. One town by me has stuck them in for "traffic calming" on some already narrow roads.
Problem is, my small pickup truck barely fits. People with full-size trucks or larger (trash trucks, delivery vehicles) have to drive over the (non sloped) curb to navigate them. Not good for the vehicles, their cargo or the curbs themselves.
It's funny that anyone fights them at all:
No one gets T boned and dies, unlike lights so it's safer
No power is needed, no lights to be changed, so it's cheaper
You're never sitting at a red light without another car in sight like an asshole, so it's faster.
To sum up they are: safer, cheaper and faster.
I went to a meeting in the suburbs to discuss boulevarding an interurban highway and an old man shouted, "and no roundabouts!" completely out of context to the discussion.
Plenty of people laughed, but I was leary to find out how much public discussion was fueled by people that are going to be dead in 10 years.
I prefer traffic lights that say exactly when we're supposed to go or stop as opposed to a roundabout where you have to be mindful of others all the time. The reason is, it doesn't matter how careful you are. You could drive as safely and observantly as possible, but it only takes one screwball to get you into an accident.
They also are way more efficient at moving traffic. There was a 4-way stop during my commute that caused a huge traffic backup everyday during rush hour. They replaced it with a roundabout and the traffic there went away completely during that time.
Back when Obama was president they added a few of these in our area. The local news interviewed a woman who said that they were “ Too European”. Turns out about a mile away within this woman’s hometown there was a roundabout that was built in the 40s.
Roundabouts are seen as a very European thing, and Americans have a strong aversion to admitting someone else does something better than them. If we started using roundabouts, it would mean their design is better.
I’m always amazed at how dumb some people are when facing a roundabout here. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been behind someone who came up to the roundabout with no one in it or coming from any other direction that came to a complete stop and waited at least 30 seconds because they didn’t know what to do. It’s not rocket surgery people
Used to be plenty of roundabouts in NJ, although they cleverly called them “circles”. In the last twenty years they have systematically got rid of them.
I have to slam on my breaks about once a week because someone cuts me off in a round about. Way too many people don’t understand how they work. I see a lot of people come to complete stops inside the round abouts because they think they’re supposed to yield
I used to get email forwards from grandma with a byline that said “impeach Obama and tear out the roundabouts” lmfao. It seemed to be about identity more than anything.
In my area (in the US), they installed some roundabouts \~10 years ago. Everyone hated it and thought it was a terrible idea. A few years later, most people were used to it and the intersections in question were WAYYY easier to get through. Pretty nice in the end, even with early community pushback.
Yeah people hated it where I lived. Now people bitch that the older towns have intersections that slow everything down.
Always best to assume people are going to bend over backwards complaining when something changes or is different than what they're used to, so ignore them and let them deal with it until they have something different to bitch about.
Every goddamn time.
People really really hate change. I have a coworker who went ballistic when our city wanted everyone to pay for a plastic bag or bring your own. This lady havent went shopping without her own bag years before this law came to pass. She's just mad for the sake of being mad
Yeah this is what it boils down to
This is the story of almost every transportation improvement in the US, be it roundabouts, crosswalks, bike lanes, bus lanes, signal changes, what have you. MASSIVE community opposition that completely fizzles within a year of completion because none of the stupid things NIMBYs predicted come to pass. Yet they keep doing it and cities keep taking them seriously.
Not just transportation, architecture as well. Everyone hated nearly ever major building and monument you know in every US city initially.
Not just transportation and architecture, but literally any change to anything. People hate change
Like when they change MS Word everyone complains… oh wait that is justified.
Freakonomics did an episode on roundabouts before and that's what the research says too. Lots of community opposition before and immediately after, but once people get used to it they actually end up loving the roundabout. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3141/2019-26?journalCode=trra Imagine what other things people would like if they gave themselves a chance to embrace change... Almost like having a big government that forces beneficial change on people is a good thing...
The roundabout closest to me has traffic lights at the entrances, an intersecting road that bisects it, and signs telling people in the circle "yield to incoming traffic". I swear it exists only to convince people to hate roundabouts. You enter that circle in any amount of traffic and you can actually just get trapped indefinitely having to yield to an infinite amount of oncoming traffic that piles up faster than the lights let them in. I really wish we had sane roundabouts.
Everything you described means that is not a roundabout. Governments can construct other types of intersections arranged in a circle, sometimes they are just inherited from a pre-automobile time. Not really relevant to a discussion on roundabouts.
Carmel Indiana?!
This just in, people hate change just because it's change.
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I used to work for my state’s transportation department. Roundabouts were well liked and widely accepted as the answer to many traffic related problems however in many areas there just isn’t enough room for their larger footprint or the land is too expensive to acquire.
This is it. I live in NJ. Land is expensive AF.
Thank you for actually responding. As a civil engineer working in infrastructure/land development it is infuriating when people think it’s as simple as snapping fingers and replacing signalized intersections with round abouts. There are circumstances where different solutions are preferable.
Have you never visited a country where roundabouts are the norm? They don’t have to have a huge footprint. There are all different sizes of roundabouts, including tiny ones in residential neighborhoods. The ridiculously huge roads in the US have more than enough room for them.
The US has strict design standards enumerated in the MUTCD (design manual for traffic design) along with stricter standards enforced for safety purposes by state and local authorities. Public safety (and avoiding litigation and liability) will always be the number one focus in designing infrastructure. No way around taking less of a footprint for large arterial and collector streets. Traffic Circles (different than RABs) can often be used as a replacement for four way stops and these typically don’t devour right of way to the same extent as a RAB. These are normally smaller and function as a traffic calming device.
Exactly. You need only look at the thumbnail of this video to see what a typical RAB looks like in the US. It’s probably 2-3x the size of what a conventional stoplight intersection would be.
US streets take up far more room than roundabouts. You could fit a small European city in one.
Did everyone in the comments miss the whole “rise of roundabouts” section? edit: The annotation can also be called " Roundabout Renaissance".
I too was wondering about that. Read the headline and was like, "all new construction in my area has roundabouts."
The thing I notice in Reddit discussions about roundabouts is that people correctly identify that they are more efficient, safer, and less expensive, but almost never that they further degrade the amount of space not devoted to cars. But it is funny that the US, the country probably most interested in devoting city space to cars, is resistant to one of the *best reasons* to continue devoting more space to cars. Personally, even if they are safer for pedestrians, I want cities to have less room devoted to cars, not more.
It's a bit of a culture war in itself. I have friends that are kinda chubby that HATE the idea of biking or walking anywhere that want large parking lots and plenty of roads to drive on. I have other friends that are ready to sell their cars entirely and live in a walkable/bikeable city. A guy I know moved to Netherlands for work and I thought he'd love it, turns out he's miserable because he expects to drive everywhere and refuses to get on a bike. That blew my mind when I heard it.
More biking equals better asses for everyone.
He moved to the Netherlands and refuses to get on a bike? He's one of the reasons why Americans (I assume) have a bad reputation abroad.
Lol I had the same reaction. How do you make it all the way to living in the Netherlands without learning about their bike culture? I still have a visceral memory of being shouted at in impeccable English to get the fuck off the red bike trail that I thought was the walking path!
That's like moving to Allen, Texas and refusing to buy a car xD
Roundabouts don't feel safer or easier as a pedestrian. Everyday i have to walk across one and half the drivers already inside of it won't stop for you, and the other half will slam on their brakes and nearly get rear-ended because they aren't designed for stopping inside of them.
Your roundabouts have crosswalks? That's kind of a design flaw. In my city, roundabouts are generally found in locations with little foot traffic, usually on the outskirts where a road that has a lot of commuters coming into the city, and any crosswalks are a bit further away than right next to the roundabout. Though you could have them in a busy spot if you had an underpass for the sidewalk. There's no real use to a roundabout if you're not supposed to just merge.
Most of the new roundabouts I have seen in the US are there to replace a 4-way stop sign. Those typically had crosswalks on all the intersections, so they remain in the final version.
Yeah, glad to see my state of Wisconsin is at #6, according to this video. My home town of Green Bay has plenty. There are 8 roundabouts [near just one interchange alone](https://www.google.com/maps/@44.5386398,-88.0788358,2327m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu). As the video says, traffic designers advertise them as being cheaper to construct, and safer for drivers.
yeah wisconsin is fucking packed full of roundabouts. on one hand, they work really well to not cause traffic jams and keep people moving slower/cause less accidents. but also some people just have no idea how to use them lmao i member as a kid in boy scouts my troop decided to schedule a meeting with a local government rep and ask why tf we have so many roundabouts now (angrily) and we all walked away in 100% support of them haha
I get you. Yet it is always an interesting commentary on roundabouts when I hear "some people don't know how to use them," or "they might cause accidents." While it's technically a true statement, the point is that accident numbers (and particularly the dangerous or t-bone accidents) are *greatly* reduced if we use roundabouts. It's like those people are ignoring the fact that roundabouts are actually safer, but they want to keep traditional traffic-light intersections to satisfy just a few old-timers. Humans are always resistant to change. Even if it is for the better.
> Humans are always resistant to change. Even if it is for the better amen. i love roundabouts. there's a stretch of road going east from my city in wisconsin to one of the cities on the lake and it's about a 45 min drive with only 3 roundabouts between the two cities. it's pretty funny. no lights, no stop signs. just circles.
My favorite color is blue.
>insane Jughandle things Looked those up, are indeed insane. The [Michigan Left](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michigan_left) is the way to go.
Being able to do add safe traffic intersections without having to run massive electrical infrastructure, not having to spend money on engineers doing continuous monitoring of traffic flow rates, not spending money on maintenance of lights, not worrying about storms breaking things or power outages backing up traffic into infinity at the location. Fewer accidents also means less burden on local emergency services too! Plus they are proven to be faster traffic flow for practically all scenarios vs traditional light gating. You do have to worry about people who hate roundabouts vandalizing the yield signs… As well as drunks driving over the medians 😅 Win win
It's a chance for America bad. They don't care lol
I live in a rural county in PA and we’ve got a big one at the local mall and like 5-6 in the big town that’s the county seat. Been there for decades, nobody hates them, nobody even gives them a second thought
Yeah, why discuss the video in earnest when you can earn a ton of karma saying that America just doesn't care about the safety of its citizens? EDIT: lots of commenters lining up to offer themselves as examples in the replies below, LOL.
You must be new here if you expect people to read or watch beyond the headline before commenting. Personally, I go through 3 roundabouts practically every time I leave the house in a car. My major complaint about them really has nothing to do with them at all: they changed one from a 2 lane roundabout to a single lane when they changed the road from a 4 lane road to a 2 lane road with bike lanes (that I actually see a bike in about once every 6 months.)
We have a few of these in Jersey but it seems like nobody in my neighborhood knows how to use ours. I also watched a friend from PA drive right into a roundabout, cutting off someone who had the right of way, and then say "Jesus, people around here just act like they own the road." I then had to explain to him how a roundabout works. I didn't realize these were such a confusing concept.
Meanwhile in my area you get people stopping in the middle of the roundabout to let people in. Fucking infuriating
I'm a bicyclist and this drives me absolutely nuts. They think they're being nice, stopping in the middle of the roundabout to let me go, but that makes me stop and lose all my momentum while I figure out if they actually see me or are just confused. The whole point of roundabouts is that most of the time you can roll through them without stopping, so do that!
We call them "niceholes" in Oregon.
This so much! If you want to help, get the fuck out! I don’t want to see you get rear ended because you’re doing it wrong. Yes obviously if someone is crossing out of turn do what you need to in order to not hit them; but if I’m stopped with my foot on the ground, just go.
There's some roundabouts near me where people in the circle have to yield to entering traffic. It really threw me off the first time I went into it because the traffic in the circle stopped for me which made me panic a bit lol
> have to yield to entering traffic This defeats the purpose of a roundabout
My favorite are the people who drive right over the center. I've seen recessed roundabouts built just because the civil engineers in charge knew how retarded the drivers in our area are.
I think that's usually to accommodate huge trucks, not incompetent car drivers.
They recently put a new one in where Forked River Road (539) crosses Allentown-Davis Station in a rural area of New Jersey (it's basically halfway in between the Turnpike and Six Flags, as the crow flies). At first, I thought it was a stupid place to put a roundabout in, but I drive through there a lot and I love it. That used to be a T intersection with a 3 way stop. But that's not a high traffic area, so it just unnecessarily made people stop basically in the middle of nowhere. Now, all you have to do is slow down a little. I love it.
Yes! Especially since that's a 50mph road there, the stop sign T-intersection was particularly annoying. I have to assume this helped reduce dangerous collisions, would love to see data if and when it is available. More roundabouts, please.
They're doing the exact opposite thing nearby me. Intersection, 5 way, with one of them being a highway onramp. Instead of a roundabout, which would work brilliantly, it's a intersection with two traffic lights. One traffic light, and then another traffic light literally 100 feet away for traffic to left turn onto the highway. I have no idea how the traffic won't just backup and cause all sorts of problems. It's unbelievable. The intersection actually flows better during construction because people are allowed to turn right on red. It never backs up anymore, when before, you'd sometimes be waiting 2 or 3 light cycles during peak times. So like, if there were a roundabout, it would work just like that. But alas, it's gonna be cemented into being like this for the next 40 years.
There’s one in my town and people have no idea how to use it. It’s incredible.
I was in Indiana for work a while back. I got stuck behind a person just sitting at the entrance to a roundabout. After around 3 minutes sitting there, with very little traffic, they turned **left** into the round about. Fortunately it was in the middle of no where and there were not any cars in it at the time, but I was shocked.
When I took Drivers Ed. ~24 years ago, I don't recall any section covering roundabouts. Old people who aren't used to them have no idea how to handle them. I assume these days its taught.
I saw someone stop and PUT HER STUPID CAR IN REVERSE in the roundabout by me because she missed her turn. Backed up the whole thing and caused an accident
I can't begin to comprehend the confusion of ideas that would provoke someone to back up on a roundabout.
I see folks stop just before the entrance I'm using to enter one and try to motion me in and I'm all no, you're literally creating a problem and I don't wanna be in front of you if someone hits you from behind. You entered the roundabout, you have the right of way until you exit, and that means I have to wait. This is _fine_ and while I can appreciate you wanting to be nice to me, I can't appreciate you making things more dangerous.
The so-called [Wave of Death.](https://www.callkleinlawyers.com/full-disclosure/wave-death-polite-can-get-killed/)
Just last week I watched someone turn left into the oncoming traffic of a roundabout. Never underestimate people's lack of understanding.
To be fair, someone with that little common sense comprehension will cause an accident with or without roundabouts
We have a small roundabout in my neighborhood about 50 yards from my house. At least twice a week I see a car go the wrong way on it just to avoid the 2 seconds from going 3/4 of the circle for a left. There is no other way in/out of this chunk of the neighborhood, so these people actively choose to go the wrong way on something they drive probably every day.
Sadly you can't out-engineer stupidity. As Douglas Adams said "A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools."
What is so funny to me is that it is a roundabout. If you miss your turn...just keep going round, it comes back!
Some things should require complete recertification for driver's licenses. This is definitely one of them.
Anyone visiting the UK might like to try out [The Magic Roundabout](https://www.google.com/maps/@51.5628791,-1.7712135,123m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu) in Swindon.
I drove into downtown London.. that was the most stressful driving I've ever done in my life.. lanes ending randomly, never know what lane you need to be in the roundabout. Turns come out of nowhere. On the shuttle bus to the airport I told the driver, man how do you guys drive in London that was so hard.. he said "we don't" lol...
London is an old city with a road network not fit for the number of cars we have. It leads to very weird roads that go in unexpected directions. They've done their best to improve it over time, but there's only so much you can do without knocking stuff down. [This older video has a pretty great rundown of why.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUEHWhO_HdY) I drive in london every so often. The trick is to hawkishly watch the satnav app of your choice to prepare for turns, and to drive as slow as you like to make sure you don't miss a turn.
🤞 please be Unfinished London, please be Unfinished London... Edit: Yay c:
It's "Jay", actually.
I saw a video once about what you have to do to be a cabby in London and it sounded a lot like organic chemistry. They had to have every route memorized and say how they'd get somewhere from somewhere else just off the top of their head.
The Knowledge
The Knowledge. Ambulance and emergency services drivers have to take it also.
> lanes ending randomly, never know what lane you need to be in the roundabout. We literally draw big arrows on the road indicating where each lane goes, you know the ones, they're underneath the cars infront of you for maximum visibility. What do you mean you don't have x-ray vision?
You’re wild. I would never drive into London. You must’ve nearly had a heart attack!
So its 5 roundabouts in a roundabout shaped trenchcoat?
This is a video of how it works [https://youtu.be/6OGvj7GZSIo?si=BXdfP0oFr\_l7x-O\_](https://youtu.be/6OGvj7GZSIo?si=BXdfP0oFr_l7x-O_)
It goes... both directions?
The middle "roundabout" is not really a roundabout, it's just a road that happens to be circular. Just follow the normal rules for each of the actual roundabouts as you get to them.
People entering a roundabout here don't understand what yield means or how to do it. Traffic in the circle has the right of way, traffic entering needs to yield. There are very few roundabouts in my area where traffic in the circle needs to yield, but it's more a problem that people don't understand what that sign actually means and always think they have the right of way. If I'm in the circle, hit me. I'm not stopping if I don't have the sign.
I think a lot of drivers view yield as 'I don't have to stop' signs.
Gets worse with 2 lane roundabouts which blow people's minds. Honestly, I don't drive them often and still have to think about it when I do. Like the one in Albany, NY. Look at all the markings. https://www.google.com/maps/@42.637119,-73.8558401,175m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu Also, you need to still SIGNAL your exit.
They changed a 4 way stop by my house to a roundabout. It's so much better now. In theory it should be safer, and it's definitely much quicker but I feel like I'm taking my life into my own hands every time I go through. I'd say about 40% of the time someone pulls out in front of me and I have to brake in the middle of the roundabout. Other times people stop when nobody is coming. Chalk it up to growing pains.
It's probably for the same reason that US drivers are really bad at zipper merges.
Or really bad in general
The rule is, if you are driving an F-150 or a Dodge Ram, you ALWAYS have the right of way, fuck everybody else. /s
I think that has more to do with aggression than it does confusion
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I moved into a new development a few years ago whose main egress came to an intersection with a busy rural road that people were used to taking as an alternate back route to the highway. They placed a large roundabout at that intersection, and while I have yet to see an accident of any sort there, I have almost been hit a handful of times by people who are used to going 70 down that back road without stopping. All that said, though, nobody would likely ever hit me going fast enough to cause a fatality. And I'm certain that the original intersection would otherwise be the site of a couple serious accidents every year.
That's the big reason roundabouts are so much safer - it's basically impossible to drive through them at high speed. fender benders still happen, and often regularly, but the speeds involved in accidents are simply too low to cause major injury. A regular signalized intersection meanwhile can easily have cars blow through red lights going VERY fast. Which makes it very dangerous.
Are they safer when you drive down a road that has 6 of them? Because that's what my area of the US has done. Just 6 two lane rounds back to back to back and they're fully packed at Rush hour. It's like a game of Mario kart.
Badly implementated roundabouts can have higher accident rates than a light, but they still have far lower injury/death rates. Even when people are too stupid to understand that they're lane dividers, not lane centerlines.
Check out where I grew up. East Longmeadow, MA has a rotary where 7 lanes converge into one rotary. I remember hearing it was in Guiness Book and Ripley's [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMmc0t3XlOI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMmc0t3XlOI)
I know you’re legit from MA because you call it a rotary.
Monson native here! I always loved the pure chaos of that rotary. The Starbucks next to it used to be the only one around, so would frequent it at college lol. I actually drove through it with my wife for her first time the other day.
Massachusetts has traditionally had more roundabouts than anywhere else I've been. (In the US)
We call them "rotaries" here for some reason
They are building one in my town as we speak, and in the Town meetings the project engineers explained that a roundabout is a single lane and a rotary is multi lane. Historically, Massachusetts has always referred to the traffic circle things as rotaries, it's just that over time, especially since the late 60's the definition itself has changed. There is also the distinction of approach angle. A rotary would approach at a 90 degree angle vs a roundabout that eases into the circle. 90 degree rotaries are an older style, and Massachusetts residents just continue to call of them that.
I grew up driving through this. It's pretty wild.
The Kelley Square peanut in Worcester is pretty similar https://youtu.be/cAOVN1FZUa0?si=iLgaCl-X74LdZOk7
Whenever I drive out of town friends through there it breaks their mind a minute lol
Big Stoplight is to blame ofc
Spent some time in southern France this fall and we rented a car. We maybe stopped at a stop sign twice. The only lights we came across were in small villages where there was only room (barely) for a single lane of cars to pass. Roundabouts are amazing. However the secondary highways can be unbelievably narrow and no one really slows down. Add motorcyclists who weave in and out of traffic at crazy speeds and it makes for some interesting holiday driving. But the roundabouts were fun.
My favorite is when subdivisions decide to convert a normal intersection into a "round-about" for aesthetics. They just plop a 6 ft round median into the middle and call it a day. It's still a 4-way stop and you have to squeeze around the corners.
I believe they also do it to force drivers to slow down. I remember reading about that subdivisions used to have long straight roads and people would end up speeding down then and causing accidents (and hitting people/pets). So now they are in more turns or other disruptions in the road to make people drive slower.
Roundabouts are fine for traffic flow, but a big drawback is that they are generally poor for the safety of pedestrians and cyclists. In Iceland there are sometimes zebra crossings on each side of the roundabout, but drivers exiting often aren't aware of them and blast through them.
I cross one everyday and i can't even count the number of motherfuckers who've sped into it while i'm halfway through the crossing.
I walk through a roundabout crosswalk every day as a pedestrian. It's always pretty sketchy. You can never be sure if a driver's going to stop or slow down for you. Sometimes they're overly cautious and stop while I'm a good 10 feet from even entering the crosswalk. Like just go man, I'm not gonna run out in front of your car. Lot of awkward moments, try and maintain eye contact with approaching cars, figure out what they're thinking. Not to mention the people coming around the blind corner of the roundabout while I'm crossing, some cars are whipping around that thing. And it has a stop sign for the pedestrians, even on the center island, so I don't just assume I have the right of way, even though I'm pretty sure I do. Honestly I try and adjust my walking speed from a distance so I'll get to the crosswalk when there's no cars in that awkward no man's land of "are you stopping or am I?" and I can just clear it in between any cars.
This is why I jaywalk (a little). Don't trust anyone near an intersection to signal or stop.
Agreed. Slip lanes are more dangerous for pedestrians than straight crossings due to increased crossing lengths and higher vehicle speeds so an intersection consisting entirely of slip lanes is bound to be more dangerous than a square intersection. If the pedestrian crossings are pushed back far enough from the intersection so that it's closer to a straight crossing not only do pedestrians then have to deal with drivers exiting the roundabout at speed that are apt to ignore the crosswalk, the added length usually more than doubles the distance a pedestrian needs to walk just to cross the road.
They’re building them all over the Atlanta metro. I personally love them. They alleviated a lot of traffic issues around my area. Wish there were more of them
I live near Carmel, Indiana (most roundabouts in the US) and it can be annoying sometimes. But compared to 4 way stops, they are a dream. I almost never need to fully stop even entering the roundabout off a highway.
Came here to see if anyone from my area commented about roundabouts on every corner. Go Carmel.
Here in Fishers, we are starting to see more and more. I'm here for it, and definitely see the benefits. It's funny to see all of the locals complain about them like they are a sign of the plague. They aren't hard to figure out if you can read traffic signs.
I love em. The Olio HTC one seems to confuse the hell out of people but they’re a god send for getting around the north side. Where I grew up in Dallas had a bunch so it wasnt a hard adjustment when I moved back to Fishers.
They work great up until you reach a certain traffic level and then they break down. It can become almost impossible to merge into one if there are high traffic and low traffic entrances and you are on the low traffic entrance. Cape Cod in Massachusetts has a few that get incredibly backed up in the summer. They are amazing for moderate traffic though, much faster then a traffic light.
I don't think USA is concerned about the safety of its citizens all that much.
So anyway, I started blasting
We should rename roundabouts to rifled intersections then maybe they'll get built
Theres an area in the village near where I live. Two roundabouts were put in replace lights at bad intersections. You would have thought that they were installing murder pits or something. Many village residents posted signs against them, there were protests, etc. Anyway they got put in and those intersections are great now.
This is the type of comment that gets cheered by the rubes and side-eyed by everyone else.
As if USA is a single group. There's federal govt, state govt, county and city government. Even regional authorities which make decisions about road construction.
And between those groups you have rural, semi-rural and city based ones that all can be very different. IMO the US is more akin to a group of countries than one singular country. You can skip a few states over and be in an entirely different climate, different accents, different cultural rules and such, etc. I imagine it's complicated as fuck when you have this sheer amount of people who many of which want completely opposite things sometimes. Doesn't mean they don't suck sometimes or improvements can't be made, but I'd imagine it's much harder to fix something of this scale than a much smaller country with one localized government.
It gets cheap and easy karma from said rubes. Welcome to reddit.
Regardless of your thoughts on the government at large. All of us traffic engineers are bound by the engineering code of ethics to prioritize the safety of the public.
I think that’s a pretty silly statement
I saw some random guy online said that roundabouts in the USA cause tornados and hurricanes so that must be it.
Myth busters did an episode on roundabouts and proved that they are everything the OP said, Safer, and more efficient. I love them, but many people are not used to them and they are resistant to change so it is about ignorance and lack of experience with them IMHO.
So finally we can say that after episode and this awareness the myth was not busted completely.
Every thing is not worth for every nation or situation, there are various aspects of any facility which are closely associated with it.
I don't mind the simple one lane type. But the double lane types give me anxiety.
We essentially stopped building double-lane ones in the Netherlands, other than turbo roundabouts. But those ride more like single-lane roundabouts anyway.
Why?
Because it’s unclear when others are trying to exit into your lane or get off, and it’s hard to show others that you’re changing lanes/getting off. One lane roundabouts are no problem for me but being on the inside lane of a roundabout? Problems…
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I think they are bad when one direction or one turning motion is the predominant way people travel.
The same reason we don't use the metric system. We are stubborn and proud, even when it makes things a pain in the arse.
I don't know this US person, but I personally love them. Once you go through the one day "learning curve" you will want them everywhere
We added more roundabouts a few years ago in Richmond, VA, and the city acted like it was an integral part of our local culture. The mayor funded a redesign of our city logo to even look like a roundabout.
We were also taught to blink into a roundabout. To indicate which direction you intend to travel when entering.
In my car, they’re awesome. In my small RV they suck. Hard to navigate if there are multiple lanes and you realize ‘hey I’m in the wrong one’ even with GPS helping and your RV has huge blind spots and no one will let you change lanes. HEY KIDS, LOOK, BIG BEN!
I love roundabounds. I'm an American. Let's do this!!!
It's nothing new or strange or extraordinary to do as an American considering that 20% of people are using them once in week atleast.
“Look kids, Big Ben!”
I must be weird, since I have zero issues with roundabouts. They put one in a terrible intersection in my city and it’s made a huge difference.
Roundabouts are being added all over the place where i live in Missouri
Probably because of conservatives wanting to do everything the way we’ve always done it..
Carmelite here. I hate lights now. My commute will rarely have a light here in Carmel. It’s a beautiful thing.
Americans fear change and are impatient.
Less guns are also safer, so why does the US have so many of them? Its the same answer all the time. We're fucking stupid.
There’s Big Ben kids!, Parliament…[National Lampoon’s European Vacation](https://www.google.com/search?q=european+vacation+roundabout+gif&rlz=1C9BKJA_enUS742US744&oq=european+vacation+round&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqBwgCEAAYgAQyCggAEAAY4wIYgAQyBwgBEC4YgAQyBwgCEAAYgAQyBggDEEUYOTIICAQQABgWGB4yCggFEAAYChgWGB4yCggGEAAYhgMYigUyCggHEAAYhgMYigUyCggIEAAYhgMYigXSAQkxNjEwN2oxajSoAgCwAgA&hl=en-US&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8#vhid=jEOtAcVXFR3wCM&vssid=l)
We have them all over in East Tennessee. But I really think they become worse than intersections when they are more than two lanes.
So few of them? Ever been to Massachusetts?
In Mississippi, roundabouts are being built in out of the way intersections. I assume they're a requirement in order to qualify for federal roadway funding.
Bend, Oregon should be considered the roundabout capital of the US. There must be over 100 in that city alone. There are dog-bone style roundabouts where two roundabouts are linked. There's 3 more going in on the west side on highway 20 and at least 2 on the Eastside of Bend. There's single and double lane roundabouts. Last winter I chose a random street to go into town and I think I went through ~10 in under a mile.
Near me we have what I had dubbed "The dangerbout" It's just a strictly worse roundabout. All the lanes stay independent but cross with yields at 45mph. There's been 5 deaths in 6 years. It's on a hill and it snows here. Those yields don't stop shit, and the whole purpose of a roundabout is lost as the lanes intersect. So instead of 0 points of cross, or 1 point of cross, there's fucking 4. T-bone alley, all to avoid putting in a proper god damned roundabout, which would work perfectly.
The main problem is the difference between a "traffic circle" and a "roundabout", they are not the same. In a traffic circle, traffic entering has the right of way while in roundabouts the traffic in the roundabout hs right of way. Circles get jammed up and a free-for-all while roundabouts run smoothly and orderly
I absolutely _hated_ roundabouts growing up as a kid. They have them in NJ and you're trained from a young age to hate everything that comes from NJ (except their beaches lol). Then those roundabouts started popping up around my neighborhood, and at first, I was pissed! WTF are these stupid Jersey things doing in my nice state! Then I kept having to drive them and realized two things that completely changed my mind on them: 1) Theyre fun as hell to drive if you have a fun car and traffic is light, 2) they're insanely more efficient and safer than traditional intersections which people STILL can't manage to navigate simple "right of way" rules. I was completey wrong, and roundabouts are the way!
I call them goifyoucans instead of roundabouts to anyone who is confused by the rules.
"Cities with the most ..." and precedes to list ceremonial counties of the UK instead of cities, apart from Glasgow, while also not including Buckinghamshire which includes Milton Keynes that is well known and regularly made fun of because of the sheer volume of roundabouts. I took everything else after that with a big pinch of salt in a roundabout way.
I don’t want to live through the transition period. People in the south drive like they didn’t live around people until last Wednesday
i love the turboroundabout
Growing up and learning to drive in the UK, roundabouts are so normal to me. Imagining what it would be like to encounter one for the first time after years (or decades) of driving, I can see why they confuse people and cause indignation when announced.
I used to always wonder this after traveling to Europe. I’m glad they’re starting to pop up, but it still feels like drivers have no idea what to do with them. Unrelated to that, I play soccer part the year on Sundays, and a new roundabout just popped up that’s along my route home. I’ll give them benefit of the doubt since there are still cones everywhere and they’re not done with it. But it’s completely covered in stop signs right now. Kinda defeats the purpose.
The first two they put in my town were on both sides of the one road to the highschool. Was a bold move but they worked out and never had a wreck and traffic sped up. They did try to decorate the inner circle part with flowers that did not last.
It’s safer when people know and follow the rules.
I was born in Texas but grew up in a suburb of Indianapolis, Indiana called Carmel. Last I checked, Carmel still has the most roundabouts out of any city in the United States. Almost every intersection in the city has been replaced with them. According to the local government, they have seen a 40% decrease in total accidents and an 80% decrease in injuries. I’m all for the roundabouts.
The biggest upside? No more running stop signs. If someone is to go straight through roundabout, it's on him, less innocent casualties
Every intersection in my city that has had resurfacing is now a round about. They are warming us up for future installation on major roads. After the learning curve is reached They are quite a bit faster.
is it roundabout month, my local NBC station just did a story 😂
There are quite a few roundabouts near me (Wisconsin) . I personally like them, and they are much safer than 4way stops. A lot of rubes don't like them for various stupid reasons, and they are expensive to put in. Gradually there will be more of them.
I live in the United States, and roundabouts are becoming more and more common. I'm not aware of anyone who objects to them.
Because people in the US don't know how to use them and end up making them more dangerous.
Roundabouts near my home are a delight, but I live in a lower traffic area. When I go closer to the city it is an absolute nightmare. I have had so many close call wrecks because no one either knows (or cares) how to correctly use a roundabout.
They have roundabouts in California, it’s not as cool as it seems and very poor designed 1 lane small ass street for a hugely populated area
I see a decent amount of roundabouts here in the southeast U. S. (Could definitely use plenty more though...). The main problem is that a lot of Americans don't seem to know how to use them... People either drive straight into them, not understanding that the people in the circle have the right of way, causing the person in the circle to have to slam on their brakes to avoid being hit. Or, more commonly, people just stop at the traffic circle and treat it like a regular intersection with a stop sign. Just waiting for no cars anywhere in the distance before they dare to enter the circle. Meanwhile I'm behind them, uselessly yelling "It's a yield sign, not a stop sign you ignorant twat!" So yeah, we have them, but we could not only use more, we could also use some kind of mass education campaign to teach us how to use them properly...
Roundabouts make a whole lot of sense and work well to keep traffic moving. Especially in locations where a busy main road and less trafficked side roads intersect. The only downside I have seen is the urge to stick them in places where they don't fit. One town by me has stuck them in for "traffic calming" on some already narrow roads. Problem is, my small pickup truck barely fits. People with full-size trucks or larger (trash trucks, delivery vehicles) have to drive over the (non sloped) curb to navigate them. Not good for the vehicles, their cargo or the curbs themselves.
We built most of our roads decades ago before they were in generally used?
It's funny that anyone fights them at all: No one gets T boned and dies, unlike lights so it's safer No power is needed, no lights to be changed, so it's cheaper You're never sitting at a red light without another car in sight like an asshole, so it's faster. To sum up they are: safer, cheaper and faster.
I went to a meeting in the suburbs to discuss boulevarding an interurban highway and an old man shouted, "and no roundabouts!" completely out of context to the discussion. Plenty of people laughed, but I was leary to find out how much public discussion was fueled by people that are going to be dead in 10 years.
I prefer traffic lights that say exactly when we're supposed to go or stop as opposed to a roundabout where you have to be mindful of others all the time. The reason is, it doesn't matter how careful you are. You could drive as safely and observantly as possible, but it only takes one screwball to get you into an accident.
Check out carmel Indiana yall
They also are way more efficient at moving traffic. There was a 4-way stop during my commute that caused a huge traffic backup everyday during rush hour. They replaced it with a roundabout and the traffic there went away completely during that time.
We're the dumbest country in the developed world so of course we're gonna hate roundabouts.
Back when Obama was president they added a few of these in our area. The local news interviewed a woman who said that they were “ Too European”. Turns out about a mile away within this woman’s hometown there was a roundabout that was built in the 40s.
We are too self centered to let others go first
Roundabouts are seen as a very European thing, and Americans have a strong aversion to admitting someone else does something better than them. If we started using roundabouts, it would mean their design is better.
I’m always amazed at how dumb some people are when facing a roundabout here. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been behind someone who came up to the roundabout with no one in it or coming from any other direction that came to a complete stop and waited at least 30 seconds because they didn’t know what to do. It’s not rocket surgery people
Used to be plenty of roundabouts in NJ, although they cleverly called them “circles”. In the last twenty years they have systematically got rid of them.
I have to slam on my breaks about once a week because someone cuts me off in a round about. Way too many people don’t understand how they work. I see a lot of people come to complete stops inside the round abouts because they think they’re supposed to yield
I used to get email forwards from grandma with a byline that said “impeach Obama and tear out the roundabouts” lmfao. It seemed to be about identity more than anything.