So, mostly just a bit of a straw poll. What do people think of modern Roundabouts?
Read this for more about such things first.
I’m inclined to think that, overall, they are good for car traffic. For cyclists, I think they pose a potential problem. Mostly though for novice cyclists I don’t think they would much phase an experienced rider. Who would more or less “act like a car” going through the thing.
For pedestrians though, I think they do pose a problem. The problem is two fold. But mostly it is vehicle drivers that pose the problem. Drivers don’t like roundabouts because they need to think to get through them and drivers like not thinking. Drivers also tend to completely ignore the legal fact that pedestrians have the right of way. So drivers don’t think about the fact that they are supposed to yield to pedestrians. Traffic signals force drivers to yield to pedestrians. Roundabouts do not, the driver must remember to do so, a thing they are legally required to do. The second “fold” is pedestrians are use to drivers not remembering they are supposed to yield to pedestrians and thus pedestrians are very very timid about taking the right of way that is theirs by law. And of course drivers are much less likely to yield to a pedestrian being timid than they are to one being assertive. Unfortunately there is a rather high potential cost to being an assertive pedestrian and a rather low potential cost to a driver failing to yield to a pedestrian. (Death versus needing to go to the car wash. Since as a country we are loath to actually hold people responsible for their actions behind the wheel. Kill someone while driving negligently (say while sending a text message) and you’ll get a ticket probably less than $200. Kill someone accidentally through negligence in almost any other way and you are going to jail for manslaughter.)
So roundabouts are good. But we need to work on more serious enforcement of all traffic laws in conjunction with things like roundabouts. Serious penalties for failing to yield with serious efforts to enforce pedestrian right of way and serious penalties for killing or injuring someone with your car or any other vehicle, be it a bike a motor scooter or a garbage truck.
So what do you think? Roundabouts yes no? General traffic safety and laws too? For some reason the less time I spend driving a car the more interesting these issues become to me.
I like me a good roundabout myself. The places where I’ve seen them work the best, though, are in areas where left turns are treacherous, there’s no stop light, and typically no pedestrians.
In the UK, we typically had no problems, though. Not sure if it was the drivers or the roundabout design that helped. I know that you typically crossed one part of the roundabout with the traffic coming from the right, stopped on the curb in the middle, and then only had to worry about the traffic from the left. But I don’t know if that works too well in the States (aside from the obvious fact that traffic will be coming in opposite directions here, which doesn’t affect us anyway).
B. Minich, I completely agree with you. And I think that good modern roundabouts would make massive improvements to a lot of the traffic problems we have in the US. And traffic that moves more smoothly should help with road rage which is good for everyone on the roads and on the sidewalks.
I think driver education is a problem in the US. Lets face it, anyone that has been licensed to drive a car should be able to handle a roundabout no problem along with the attendant yielding to pedestrians. But with the way a lot of people drive in the US I have a hard time taking it for granted. From my understanding licensing standards in the UK are a lot stricter than those in the US. Perhaps that is something we should take more seriously in this country.
Traffic in major metropolitan areas in the US is fast becoming an untenable nightmare (it’s bad even in the not so major areas). I don’t think we can really afford to overlook any tool that might help make things work more smoothly and with any luck improve the interactions between people.