For brevity I will shorten roundabout to ‘RA’ from here on.
There’s a stretch of road during my drive home that has 3 RAs in a row. Over the last 5 or so years they’ve existed I’ve had close calls probably close to a dozen times.
The rules aren’t too difficult: one, you yield to other traffic when you first get to the RA. Then you have the right of way when you’re in the RA. Two, these are 2 Lane RAs-- those in the inner lane can only turn left or go straight. The outer lane can only turn right or go straight.
So I’m going through a RA yesterday. I’m going straight through, using the inside lane because the road after the RA quickly merges into one lane and turns bumper-to-bumper, and it’s a pain in the ass to try to merge over from the right lane. A lady in the outside lane just to the right of me and a little ahead makes an illegal left, veering right into my path. I jammed on the brakes just in time and found out how good my reflexes still are. Fortunately the guy behind me stopped in time and didn’t rear-end me. I honked at her but a half-second too late. She never turned and saw me, and I don’t think she had any idea how close she came to getting t-boned.
I guess from now on if I’m going to go straight through I’ll keep to the outside lane and just fight the merge after. But most of my close calls have been from people barreling right into the RAs without yielding- including a garbage truck once that almost trashed me. In fact it’s so bad, at the busiest of the 3 RAs there’ve been so many accidents they actually put up blacked-out fencing to make it impossible to see oncoming traffic until you’re right up to the RA- the theory being that drivers were too overconfident in their ability to beat traffic and not have to yield, so if they couldn’t see the oncoming trafffic till the last second they’d be more cautious. So improving RA traffic safety by limiting traffic visibility. Brilliant!
The problem I have with that is that when I see another car in a roundabout, I don’t always know where they entered the RA, so I don’t know which exit from the RA would be a right, straight, or left turn.
Maybe the implementation is different where you are. Roundabouts in Massachusetts are called rotaries. They’re often wide enough for two cars, but don’t have any lane markings. And they sometimes have more than four roads meeting at the rotary, so “right”, “left”, and “straight” aren’t always useful terms.
I don’t remember whether or not I learned about roundabouts in Driver’s Ed (back in the 1980s), but since there aren’t any in the city I grew up in, I’m sure I never got any practical experience with them, nor was I tested on their usage. So yeah, I’m sure there are plenty of people who genuinely don’t know how to use traffic roundabouts.
I didn’t learn about RAs in driver’s ed, and there simply aren’t any in the suburbs of Chicago. Well, now there is one and it does cause genuine confusion. Most people don’t know how to deal with them because RA simply don’t exist in my neck of the woods.
Where I work, there is only one way in and quite obviously only one way out (duh).
There was one section of road that was especially susceptible to back-ups which would then create mind-numbing gridlock across the entire stretch.
Some years back, the powers that be decided that something must be done and the idea of a traffic circle was floated. It was voted down due to the belief that a roundabout would be too confusing to a populace that maintains but the thinnest grasp of proper automotive operating skills.
Incidentally they widened the shoulder at the trouble spot and I’m happy to report that the measure has worked like a charm.
Massachusetts actually started painting lane markings on rotaries in the past few years, especially when it’s a rotary with on/off ramps to a major highway. I do not think it’s an improvement.
Well, whine about it all you want, but the average American driver doesn’t have experience with roundabouts. So instead of smugly reveling in your obvious driving superiority, maybe you should bitch about local municipalities that add them without considering whether anyone knows how they work. Sure, it would be nice if everyone could instinctively use them, but they don’t. So you get more traffic problems, not less.
They are the wrong solution for the problem. Mesa added a whole random assortment of roundabouts, replacing traffic lights, but they made them too small. You have to slow from the nominal 45 mph road speed to about 20 just to make the turn, and there isn’t much time to get in the correct lane before you’re out of it. Semis and vehicles pulling trailers are all over, because the radius is too small to negotiate the turns safely.
So what is gained? Confusion and net slower traffic flow. But I’m sure some department got a nice budget increase for the year they were installed. And now we’re stuck with them.
Roundabouts are the preferred traffic control measure here in the Cayman Islands. And we get far fewer accidents, and less serious accidents, at roundabouts as compared to the accidents at the few major intersections controlled by traffic lights. As a result we are down to only 7 intersections controlled by traffic lights in the entire (small) country.
Yield to traffic already in the circle. Choose your lane just like you would for a traffic light controlled intersection - left lane means your are turning left or going straight; right lane means your are going straight or turning right.
Do not enter the traffic circle directly beside a vehicle that is already in the inside lane of the traffic circle.
If you do that those simple things the rest takes care of itself. Really. Draw out the possibilities.
But, alas, as the OP noted some people do not seem to understand the rules, particularly lane selection as you approach the roundabout. There is one particular roundabout where people frequently enter in the left lane intending to make a right turn. :smack: And, of course, that is at a choke point on the island so all traffic passing west to east must travel through this roundabout.
There are traffic circles on some of the rural highways out in the exurbs where I live. Fairly easy to understand. These seem to be similar to what was described in the OP, although these only have one lane, so the only option is “do I enter the circle now” or “do I wait for the oncoming car to circle past before entering?” You don’t have to worry about being in the “wrong” lane, b/c there’s only one.
HOWEVER, there are traffic circles in DC that for the life of me I do not understand. These have stoplights in the middle, and lanes walled off by concrete, so if I enter the circle from one road and want to veer off at another, I don’t actually see any way to do that, given the lane structure and barriers. Sine I only drive in DC once every couple of years, I’ve only had to negotiate these a few times. But it’s frustrating to be stopped at a light in the middle of the circle (which, to me, seems to defeat the purpose of the circle), see the road you want to take *right there *on the right, but have no way to get to it, other than, perhaps go around the circle again and somehow nudge your way through the line of cars to get in the lane on the *other *side of the concrete barrier.
Yeah, roundabouts were unheard of around here in SE Michigan until about a half dozen years ago. So i guess it’s not entirely hard to get why people are still so confused about them, not having grown up with them and been exposed to them in driver’s ed, as mentioned.
And Just Asking Questions, I may be whining (though I prefer to think of it as venting), but I ain’t feeling any kind of smug superiority- especially not right after my close call (unless smug superiority involves excessive sweating and feelings of extreme terror). :eek: Maybe you’re right, my anger is misplaced and should be directed against the municipalities that install the RAs. Though in principle I think they’re not such a bad concept, when everybody manages to follow the couple simple rules to use them. It’s nice not to have to wait at a red light if there’s no traffic coming.
that gets into a chicken-and-egg situation, though, doesn’t it?
roundabouts have popped up everywhere in metro Detroit (where they’ve had the room to build them.) I love them. There’s only one simple rule to remember and that is “traffic already in the circle has right of way.” Past that, they all have ample signage before you get to it telling you which lane you need to be in to go your desired direction.
the newest ones even have a slight improvement; if you’re turning right you needn’t enter the roundabout at all, the right turn lane just bypasses it.
Practically every intersection they’ve changed from signals to a roundabout has improved drastically. And the one that didn’t wasn’t the fault of the RA, it was that one exit from the RA goes right into a signaled intersection in 150 feet. Total planning failure.
Midwest driving doesn’t play well with roundabouts. I recently saw one in which the driver already in the roundabout decided to be “polite” and stop to let in a car who had been waiting for her to clear the entrance. Luckily for her, the roundabout was otherwise empty.
The other driver was looking at her like her car had just grown tentacles.
I live in SE Michigan as well. Fortunately for me, one of the first in the area built as a “test of concept” was on a low traffic intersection near where I was living at the time. So I got practiced with them fairly early. My wife, on the other hand, wants to wait for traffic to clear which, of course, it never does.
We just had our first roundabouts in the county created a year ago. These connect 2 lane roads only. Each lane in the roundabout is properly marked. If you are going ahead, you use the lane so marked; if you are going right, likewise. Some lanes have multiple choices, also marked, and as long as the markings are followed, you cannot go the wrong way.
After a year, there was an analysis of the effects of the new intersections. There have been about twice as many accidents as before. Traffic engineers had predicted the opposite. (Most accidents were caused by failure to yield or not understanding who had the right-of-way.) BUT…there have been no serious or fatal ones, unlike the previous years. To a traffic engineer, that’s progress, I guess.
The morons who don’t understand them don’t bother me so much. They are morons, after all. It’s the countless non-morons who can’t figure them out that make me furious.
I grew up with the things, so they are second nature. But I can see where they would be confusing to the novice.
I’m not sure that’s such an improvement. Right-turning traffic has to merge with main traffic somewhere, and I don’t see a lot of difference between merging in the roundabout or later; it’s still a one-on-one lane merge.
Well, there’s the infamous “suicide circle”/Cumberland Circle in Des Plaines at Golf and Wolf that has been there forever. But, you’re right, not many around here. I think there might be about a dozen true roundabouts in the Chicagoland area. (I’m not counting the small ones they have in the neighborhoods to slow down traffic.)
St Martin has zero (or close to zero) red lights/stop signs. They’ve all been replaced by roundabouts, and IMHO they are the best solution to keeping traffic moving smoothly. At least for me, their proper use is instinctive.
