No, a “traffic circle” is not a “roundabout” is not a “rotary”. The design and operation of all these types of flow structures is different.
OP, I feel your pain! Where I grew up they didn’t have roundabouts, but now they are everywhere and I love them. And this whole idea of “people are confused or they have never been taught how to negotiate them” is bizarre. Every roundabout I have used has had signs as you approach that designate the travel pattern and also most have big white arrows painted on the roadway itself. So how do drivers not understand? The signs are word and picture in case the driver doesn’t know English. I live in Oregon and maybe it’s marked better here, dunno.
“How dare you try to make me learn something?”
The two-lane roundabouts in my area initially didn’t have signs explaining how to yield, so people just followed the normal rules for turning onto a multi-lane road and entered the right lane as traffic approached in the left lane. Now there are signs underneath the yield signs saying to yield to both lanes. (Although one ended up being restriped to remove one of the lanes anyways.)
But it’s apparently a right in America to do so. On US-60, a freeway I drive regularly, there is a spot where the two right-hand lanes (out of six total) peel off to another freeway.
[ul]
[li]Two miles before the interchange, there are pavement markings (101-N Only) in the two lanes.[/li][li]A mile before the interchange is a sign with the two lanes marked as 101-N having an arrow pointing straight down for each and the yellow Exit Only tag below them.[/li][li]A half-mile before the interchange the pavement markings are repeated and the lane line to the left of the inner lane changes to the double-wide short dashes that indicate the lane is exit only.[/li][li]At the interchange is the exit sign with the two lanes’ arrows now pointing to one o’clock and another yellow tag.[/li][/ul]Frequently I see people crossing the gore to continue down 60, sometimes veering over from the outside lane.
I am looking forward to autonomous driving.
If both of you stay in your lane, there is no reason to hit. If he crosses into your lane and hits you, it’s his fault. If you cross into his lane and hit him, it’s his fault. In other words, the same as any other multiple lane road. Except in Maine, because we have a law about always yielding to the left at rotaries, when entering AND when continuing around (cite). Although I’m not sure that has much validity now as none of our multi-lane circles have concentric lanes anymore, they all spiral out to the exits.
The same way you determine which road would be straight ahead if it were a five-way intersection without a rotary island in the middle of it.
Here’s on in Augusta, Maine: Google Maps
From this viewpoint, you can see all five exits. The second exit looks to be straight ahead, and indeed the center lane (which becomes the right lane of the circle) which is marked as straight ahead only, leads you right to it. Besides, if you’re uncertain because you don’t know the area, you have the option of taking the furthest left lane and making a lap or two around while you figure out where you’re going, which is much less of a hassle than taking a wrong turn at an intersection, and then having to find a safe place to turn around.
Thread = TL;DR … maybe this has been covered already …
Rotaries are great for “traffic calming devices” … if a city builds an expressway, but people continue to use Main St … nothing beats a few rotaries to force people to the expressway … rotaries are great for being a menace, dangerous and absolutely the worst kind of roadway intersection …
I learned about rotaries in the Boston, MA area where people know how to drive them … they started installing rotaries out here in The West and it’s insane with people completely unfamiliar … I can’t see any reason for this other than chasing commuters out of their cars and into the city buses … which is a worthy end, for sure, but the means to this end leaves much to be desired …
You must live in Bend or someplace, because there’s very few in the Portland area. Here’s a site with an interactive map of roundabouts in the US. I’m fairly sure the engineering firm that owns the site is based in Portland, so they probably have Oregon roundabouts up to date, but the rest of the country, probably not. (Well, they don’t have the latest one out here in Washington County, but it’s just been completed or perhaps isn’t quite complete yet. Next time I get out to Verboort, I’ll have to take a look.)
As for the difference between roundabouts and other circular roads, the modern roundabout was invented in the mid-60s (1966, I think), so anything constructed before that is not one. A number of them on the east coast/midwest fall into this, although some may have been upgraded to be like them.
Another thing is that roundabouts are only good for light to medium traffic loads. When traffic is consistently heavy at rush hour, they need to be replaced with traffic lights.
Tri-cities and Walla Walla, WA have a few. Portland had the first “kinda” roundabout I’d ever seen and that was back in 1970.
I dont think anyone said roundabouts were the answer to all intersections, so if lights are needed then lights it is. But they definitely serve a very good function and I prefer the opportunity to keep moving vs sitting at a light with no other traffic in sight just waiting for it to change to green.
We traveled to Grand Cayman this past April. My husband was the official driver on our rental car. While he does have some experience with roundabouts, in these parts our roundabouts are all counter-clockwise, as would be natural because we drive on the right hand side of the road.
So if you were one of the hapless Caymanians who had to share the road with us from 8Apr to 15Apr, I deeply apologize. It’s confusing enough to KEEP LEFT. Entering a roundabout from the left…well, let’s just say that the learning curve was very steep.
No worries. We have, er … had, another helpful system. Rental cars had white license plates. Regular passengers cars owned by locals had yellow plates. And light trucks had orange plates. Red or blue plates for certain tourism buses and odd such.
So if we saw you in a car with a white plate turning on your windshield wipers when you meant to activate your turn signal then that is the warning to local motorists to be aware because you are likely to do some weird stuff at any moment.
Alas the color coding of license plates is going away as we update to a new and more secure system that will make it harder for thieves to steal plates. All the new plates I’ve seen so far are white. Oh, the horror! :eek: