ik roundabouts probably not that much safer then a junction with crashes if at all but would have thought a crash on roundabouts be safer then getting t boned at a junction

49 comments

  1. They are actually becoming more common. At least near me, some have been getting added in over time. Lots of newer shopping centers have had them. And depending on where you’re located, they could already be common. I remember quite a few in New Jersey.

  4. They’re starting to pop up in Dallas-Fort Worth. There are always a ton of accidents at first because nobody knows how to drive on them, but those subside with time.

  5. Changing existing intersections is expensive. But in my experience for the last 10-15 years anytime a road is built or redone, a roundabout design is included

  6. We’re on roundabout 115 or so in Carmel, with more in the planning phase. We may eventually become the largest one stoplight city in the country.

    The one traffic light that’ll probably remain, at Main/Range line, was apparently Indiana’s very first traffic signal. It’s also a dense and developed intersection without the room needed for a roundabout

    That said roundabouts are great if you’re in the traffic lane, not so great for pedestrians who have to yield before crossing since they lack the pedestrian crossing symbols common at traffic signal intersections. In some of the larger figure eight roundabouts, that means yielding up to 7 times

  7. There are roundabouts.

    And it usually costs at least $1M to convert a signalized intersection to a roundabout.

  8. Why can’t I turn right on red in Europe?

    We have roundabouts, many states have been aggressively adding them for years.

  10. Wisconsin has a bunch of roundabouts.

    I hate the sequential roundabouts though. “Go left at the first roundabout then straight at the next roundabout then right at the” FUCK OFF

  11. They just recently put a few of them in my hometown. They are a pain to get used to at first, but once you do get used to it they’re not a problem (except for when other drivers don’t know how to use them).

  14. Not sure what you’re talking about because they’re *everywhere* around me. And that’s all they put in anymore, too.

  15. We have a few of them that I know of in Vermont. For the most part, though, traffic is too light to make them useful. There’s a few spots in the Burlingtom area I can think of where they could be quite useful.

  16. Well, at least this isn’t the “Why no kettles?” question.

    We *do* have roundabouts, but it’s true they were quite rare until a few years ago. Within the last decade, they’ve become more and more common across the country, including in Georgia where I live. I know of a dozen within ten miles of my house.

    One of my favorite applications for them is on either side of an intersection with a highway at an overpass/underpass. I saw a number of those in smaller cities in Minnesota, and they worked great to eliminate gridlock at them. My girlfriend’s mom expressed her hatred of them when we encountered a few, but she’s in her mid-’80s (and I was driving, not her), so take that for what it’s worth.

  17. They put one in my old neighborhood but didn’t size it properly. An ambulance rolled over on it the first week it was there and moving trucks were too big for the tiny circle so they had to drive over the landscaping at the center to get through.

    The goal of the roundabout was to make it a hassle for commuters to cut through this residential street to bypass the traffic on the main roads flanking the neighborhood, but they ended up just pissing off the homeowners.

  18. We have, and have had them as long as I can remember, here in New Jersey (we call them traffic circles), they are pretty common in Massachusetts as well.

    They are becoming more common elsewhere, especially in mixed use developments.

  19. We have a bunch of them in New Jersey, I think they’re putting them in wherever there used to be jug handles to kind of update everything.

  20. They are common in new road layouts, but a lot of our roads have been in place for a long time.

  22. My town was built with a roundabout in the downtown next to the train station since it was established

  26. Carmel, Indiana has something like 90+% of its intersections as roundabouts and incorporated a roundabout in its new flag.

    They are becoming more common.

    If you look at the numbers they are a lot safer and cheaper. It costs much more to put in a light controlled intersection and yearly maintenance of light controlled intersections is higher.

    I believe the numbers I saw for Carmel, IN was that in the 8 years they put in the roundabouts crashes remained the same despite the population tripling and fatal crashes went down to near zero.

  27. It depends on where you are. In extremely busy intersections, I would much rather have a light.

  36. Seems they tend to put roundabouts in weird places here in California. They put one in at a rural intersection where 95% of the traffic had no stop and the cross street had stop signs. Now the 95% has to slow way down every time.

  37. After living in a place with roundabouts, I’m not convinced of their “superiority.” Some roundabouts, particularly the bigger ones, were fine and I can see that as an alternative to traffic lights in some scenarios.

    By far the worst ones were on small residential roads, where the roundabout itself was so small that you were basically going straight through the intersection anyway and it did nothing to control the flow of traffic. Combine that with one road that has much heavier traffic and people blocking the roundabout leaving people on the side street wishing there was a traffic light to let them get through.

  39. We do have them. They are becoming more popular.

    The thing is, when you put them in places where none existed before, there is a learning curve. People do stupid stuff on them, like stopping in the roundabout for the yielding person to go. Then public sentiment is to hate them and they don’t get built.

    I used to hate them, because I never drove on one until i was in my early twenties and was not familiar with them. I love them now. I think they are better in many instances. However, If the people in the area are new to them, it sucks.

  40. We have them everywhere in Wisconsin now. I learned about them while driving in the UK. When we got our first ones I had to force myself to not turn left into them.

  41. We do have them they just aren’t as common as they are in Europe. As for why it’s because our traffic engineers are extremely conservative and don’t want to try new things quickly. Also unlike Europe we have right on red which makes intersections a bit more efficient than they are in Europe

  42. They used to be all over the place in New Jersey, but they’ve slowly removed them and made them into regular intersections over time.

  43. Roundabouts are getting more popular in Florida because they’re a lot cheaper to repair after a Hurricane goes past. If it isn’t an intersection on a main road, roundabouts make more sense in a lot of places.

  45. There are 3 roundabouts within 2 miles of my apartment. So yes, we have them. Why did you think otherwise?

  46. Wisconsin has been putting them in at every interstate entrance/ exit over the past ten years.

  48. We have lots of roundabouts. Unfortunately, it seems like a majority of the driving public doesn’t understand them.

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