What do we think of this?
I personally dislike driving on roundabouts, but some stats (are they good stats?) show beneficial effects on traffic and safety.
Apparently the City of Carmel got a mayor who had a thing for roundabouts
Florida has a lot of those FWIW. There are full 12 lane intersections with speed limits in the 50s and 60s, the intersections are so big you cant enter on yellow light because you'll hit someone who just started accelerating into the intersection.
I grew up near Carmel. My family drove through Carmel a fair bit, and we always liked the roundabouts. They almost put one in at an intersection near where we lived, but some asshole on our street started a petition and got it killed. That roundabout would have greatly improved rush hour traffic.
Carmel is a very wealthy suburb of Indianapolis, and a lot of people in central Indiana make fun of them for the roundabouts. It's too bad that roundabouts have been associated with rich pretentious assholes, because roundabouts are good.
That's one thing that annoys me. Things like roundabouts, protected bike lanes, and street closures for cars are associated with gentrifiers and the wealthy because they're good urbanism and rich people want to live in nice places. The rich hog the good urbanism for themselves.
Roundabouts are good urbanism. They reduce traffic, emissions, and accidents.
As a frequent pedestrian, I like roundabouts. I don't have to wait for walk signs, don't have to wonder if that truck is gonna drive into the crosswalk, and don't have to hold up traffic crossing. I can understand why some pedestrians wouldn't like them though, especially if they can't cross the road quickly for whatever reason.
Regardless, death to cars.
It's probably not universally preferable. Like I said if you don't walk fairly quickly then they're probably worse than an intersection. For me though, I can move between traffic without having to stop traffic like at an intersection. At a four way intersection, you have to wait for the walk sign, entirely freeze traffic, and people sometimes pull into the crosswalk rather than stopping before it like they're supposed to. Occasionally they run red lights too. Alternatively you can risk crossing without a walk sign but that carries a lot of risk. People also drive close to full speed through intersections, so it's a lot harder to time a crossing and react as a pedestrian.
At a roundabout, it's like crossing a one way street that people drive slower on. They won't stop for you, but you only have oncoming traffic from one direction. Gaps in traffic are pretty normal so you just have to wait for a decent one to cross rather than waiting for a traffic light to complete a full cycle so it can make a gap in traffic. Finally vehicles are more predictable in roundabouts than in traditional intersections because they will just keep moving forward rather than stopping and driving based on the light pattern which they may or may not choose to follow.
plowing straight through the center of the roundabout as if it weren’t there
is there nothing in the center to prevent this from happening?
I see a lot of these at entrances to facilities. I think it's meant as a sort of speed bump? Like it slows you down before you get in.
My range isn't there but here is the song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwPWGUhEtP0
https://www.startribune.com/are-roundabouts-really-safer-than-traditional-intersections/561251111/
With only about 5,000 roundabouts on the nation’s roads — making them still somewhat uncommon — it’s natural that drivers might consider them confusing. But Jim Brainard, the mayor of Carmel, Ind., is a big proponent of them. He spent time studying law in the United Kingdom and marveled at how efficiently traffic flowed through them. In 1996, he brushed off ridicule and brought the first roundabout to Carmel. Now with 126 of them, the city just north of Indianapolis is virtually traffic light free and unofficially known as the “Roundabout Capital of America.”
“I’m responsible,” he proudly says, touting the results that have come with them. Property-damage crashes at Carmel’s roundabouts are down 40%, and crashes with injuries have dropped by 75%. Insurance rates have dropped, and drivers have saved gas with less stopping and idling at traffic signals.
Results in Carmel mirror what has occurred nationally where the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety have found a 37% decrease in total crashes and a 75% drop in crashes resulting in injuries when compared with traditional signalized intersections. Fatal mishaps dropped by 90%. Wrecks involving pedestrians declined 40%, the data found.
More than 10,000 motorists died at intersections in 2018, according to the FHWA, and fatalities often resulted from head-on, right-angle or T-bone crashes in which another driver ran a red light or was making a turn. Roundabouts have a favorable safety record because motorists are generally moving in the same direction and traveling at slower speeds, said Joe Gustafson, a traffic engineer with Washington County Public Works Traffic Operations.
It’s not that crashes don’t happen, but they are more likely to be low-energy sideswipes or rear-enders that tend to bring less serious consequences, he said.
“You are generally cleaning up glass and not blood,” he said.
See people dislike roundabouts because they dont want to be attentive, but if they fuckup it might just mean that they have to keep going around the circle at a low speed. Although intersections are easier and more lazy, if youre inattentive it means t-boning someone at high speed.
I dislike roundabouts because people are fucking stupid and have cut me off and left me locked inside one as the entirety of traffic off a highway entered into the damn thing. I guess it has more to do with foresight when planning them than the roundabout itself...
The link says "The number of injury accidents in Carmel have reduced by about 80 percent and the number of accidents overall by about 40 percent. Our numbers are similar to those reported by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety."
"Researchers at Ryerson Polytechnic University, the Institute, and the University of Maine studiedcrashes and injuries at 24 intersections be-fore and after construction of roundabouts.The study found a 39 percent overall de-crease in crashes and a 76 percent decrease in injury-producing crashes. Collisions involving fatal or incapacitating injuries fell as much as 90 percent." according to https://web.archive.org/web/20140714142530/https://www.k-state.edu/roundabouts/news/sr3505.pdf
I can't vouch for the quality of that study.
I don't get that, gotta say. Intuitively I find them confusing.
They're a little confusing but you're not gonna get tboned by a guy in a lifted truck going 60 cuz he's running a red
This is the big thing, people drive slower causing both lower accidents and the accidents they do have are far far far less deadly.
YESSSSS ROUNDABOUTS BAYBEEEEEE :sicko-jammin: HIT ME WITH THOSE DIVERGING DIAMONDS, AND IF WE'RE REALLY SPICY HIT ME WITH THOSE DIVERGABOUTS
My absolute favorite thing is when they put traffic lights in front of roundabouts
Which I have seen quite a few of around where I live
Where I grew up there is 1 roundabout that no one has issues with. I have no idea why, but it's smooth sailing 100% of the time, literally the easiest roundabout I've ever seen. Somehow no one understands any of the other roundabouts in the city
Roundabouts are good, except on nyc where every one i’ve been in is 3 lanes wide and has traffic lights at both ends
