Roundabouts

[Klaus]

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.

[Doctor Phibes]

The best thing about roundabouts is you can avoid going to unpleasant places.

The M25 in SE England is the best example of this.

[George K]

None in our town, but in the adjacent suburb there's one in the center of town. Each of the streets leading to it has a stop sign.

I may have posted this in the past:

[Doctor Phibes]

@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.

[Jolly]

None of our roundabouts have stop signs, they have yield signs.

[Doctor Phibes]

@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.

[Mik]

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.

[mark]

I prefer roundabouts to stop signs and lights. We have a group of them by an entrance/exit to I-43 and a few more at an exit off I-90 about 8 miles from here.

[Copper]

@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.

[Kincaid]

The US driver hadn't even figured out the zipper method of merging and now you expect them to understand a roundabout?

[Doctor Phibes]

@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.

[Copper]

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.

[Klaus]

@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.

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1533711050051587

[Mik]

You really haven't had the roundabout experience until you do it in Tijuana.

[Horace]

@mik said in Roundabouts:

You really haven't had the roundabout experience until you do it in Tijuana.

Nor the reacharoundabout experience.

[George K]