Roundabouts
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We have a large roundabout in the center of our town. Every time I drive around it, I'm filled with an impending sense of doom.
To say the locals are clueless would be charitable. I've seen a guy drive around the wrong way, and people frequently make a left turn as a way of "saving time", rather than drive around.
I was once pulled over by Johnny Law when the guy in front of me stopped dead in the freaking middle of the freaking road, and I swapped lanes to drive around him. According to the cop I should have stopped freaking dead in the road like an utter moron and sat their watching him drool on his cellphone instead of switching lanes (it's a two lane roundabout). I resisted the almost overwhelming urge to point out a number of things which would have undoubtedly led to my incarceration.
This year, the town clearly lost patience, and put in huge numbers of traffic cones which forces people to swap lanes and gives priority to cars coming onto the rotary LIKE THE FUCKING FRENCH DO, which has made things even worse. Mrs. Phibes actively avoids going on it, and will take alternate routes. I refuse to be cowed.
America isn't ready for roundabouts.
Proud supporter of Plan 2525. Everything you think, do and say will be in the pill you took today.
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@doctor-phibes said in Roundabouts:
gives priority to cars coming onto the rotary LIKE THE FUCKING FRENCH DO
Hu? That's not how French roundabouts work, I think. The whole point of the roundabout is that those on the rotary have priority.
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@klaus said in Roundabouts:
@doctor-phibes said in Roundabouts:
gives priority to cars coming onto the rotary LIKE THE FUCKING FRENCH DO
Hu? That's not how French roundabouts work, I think. The whole point of the roundabout is that those on the rotary have priority.
Somebody needs to tell the French
(I wasn't being serious about the French, but they have that bloody priorite a droite rule, if I remember correctly)
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Now that you guys have witnessed my master debatery, let me be serious.
Better for the environment? How much extra fuel and asphalt (mostly made of oil) did they use in creating these roundabouts? How much excess land did they have to use? Did they sacrifice green space? Easier driving encourages more driving and less walking and bicycling...
Time saver? More traffic volume moved through quicker? What about all the backed up traffic while they were building these things? Also, what happens regarding maintenance? Instead of blocking one lane and street, you will block almost all...
What was the cost? Was there a better use for the money?
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I've been in the Arc de Triomphe roundabout a few times. It's a little frightening if you are not used to it, but it works amazingly well (famously every few weeks a car runs out of fuel driving for hours on the innermost ring). No way in hell would the traffic flow nearly as well with an intersection.
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The best thing about roundabouts is you can avoid going to unpleasant places.
The M25 in SE England is the best example of this.
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"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08
The saying, "Lite is just one damn thing after another," is a gross understatement. The damn things overlap.
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@george-k said in Roundabouts:
Each of the streets leading to it has a stop sign.
Yeah, they did that on ours, too, even before the current debacle. It rather defeats the object.
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Always remember, Operation Valkyrie was an act of sedition.
Warning: I post things that interest me. Read and comment at your own discretion. -
@jolly said in Roundabouts:
None of our roundabouts have stop signs, they have yield signs.
Yes, that's what they're supposed to do.
Having said that, back where I used to live in the UK, the roundabouts got so ridiculously busy that they ended up putting in traffic lights as well.
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I have driven extensively in Carmel and their roundabouts are great. Except that they are at every freaking intersection in some areas. It gets tiresome.
That said, we are getting a lot more around me and they work pretty well. Where you get problems is the one laners where visibility is not as good coming up to it.
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@klaus said in Roundabouts:
The whole point of the roundabout is that those on the rotary have priority.
Yes, of course
I used to go through 4 rotaries on the way to school when I was in college in Boston. That route would have been unusable without them.
They could solve a lot of problems in Northern Virginia.
Where was I where they had rotaries but then the idiots had traffic lights in each of them? That destroyed the whole thing. Detroit maybe.
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@kincaid said in Roundabouts:
The US driver hadn't even figured out the zipper method of merging...
Another thing that frequently sends me into apoplexy.
I probably need to calm TF down.
Having said that, I was once stuck in a traffic jam in the UK near my parents house, and cars were actually blocking emergency service vehicles from getting through by using lanes they weren't supposed to. In the end a couple of large trucks took action to essentially run these drivers off the road in order to let the ambulance through. It was genuinely sickening to watch. I think on the whole US drivers are a lot better behaved when they hear an ambulance or fire engine.
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@copper said in Roundabouts:
While in the rotary, never make eye contact
Never
It is an admission that you see them.
A Bostonian will take advantage of that every time.
There's a legendary clip of a German TV journalist crossing the roundabout at Place de la Concorde in France live on TV, suggesting that the trick to crossing as a pedestrian is to avoid eye contact at all cost.
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“I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.” ~Winston S. Churchill
