I have lived in a town where there were two of them, much to the consternation of people not familiar with it. However, I just checked the place and they have both been redesign to normal street crossings. This roundabout is also a bit confusing to strangers as it doesn’t look like one because of the railway going across it. Google Maps
Yes I came in to mention this one. It’s a pretty unusual one in that there is an entrance and an exit off the inside of the roundabout. Aerial view.
Street view: note the unlabelled filter lane at the extreme right to reach the pub and houses in the middle.
If you’re exiting onto the roundabout here you have to give way to traffic coming from the left.
Farnborough, nearby, has another roundabout containing a pub. (I pass this one every day on my bike.)
It also has one containing a car park, although this is accessed via an underpass from the adjacent car park, rather than off the roundabout.
Floater: never mind a railway - how about another road? (This is known as a “hamburger” roundabout, for reasons which become obvious if you tilt your head 90 degrees…)
Those features seem to be the standard distinctions (particularly the splitter islands) here in the US anyway:
Roundabouts are different from other types of circular intersections that you might have seen. They are not rotaries or the older traffic circles, which are still common in the northeastern United States, which typically have higher speeds on approaches and usually higher speeds within the circle. They may use stop- or signal-control, or they may require circulating traffic to yield to entering traffic. A roundabout is also not the same thing as a neighborhood traffic circle, typically used on local streets for speed control.
Link to the USDOT site
My state (Washington) has been on a bit of a roundabout binge having built 120 of them in the last fifteen years, with more to come. I have two of them within a mile of my home.
My first exposure to them was visiting Coventry, England about fifteen years ago. The gentleman I was working with took me to a pub for lunch and we must have breezed through about four of them in five minutes. So elegant. I immediately became a convert.
Research has shown that they improve traffic flow, reduce accidents and increase fuel economy. What’s not to love?
A traffic circle is the older term, and traffic circles are much larger than roundabouts. There has been a boom in building roundabouts in the US. The older circles were usually built before engineers knew how to build them, and are don’t slow down traffic enough to avoid accidents.
Most US traffic circles are being redesigned to make them work more like roundabouts.
If you want to see the difference between a traffic circle, a rotary (UK roundabout) and a modern roundabout, search www.k-state.edu to see pictures.
The FHWA has a video about modern roundabouts that is mostly accurate (Modern Roundabouts: A Safer Choice - YouTube ).
Can you explain this distinction, please.
I’m having trouble seeing the difference between what you term a ‘modern roundabout’ and a standard UK roundabout (ignoring mini- or ‘magic’-roundabouts)