I like traffic circles for their efficiency and speed, but there’s one near here that I avoid because I don’t know how to drive in it.
This circle has 5 roads radiating from it, meaning it’s a crossroads with one additional road. Two of them are 4 lane roads, 2 lanes in either direction. 3 are 2 lane roads with one in either direction. Thus, there are 14 lanes entering or exiting the circle.
What I don’t understand is who has the right of way.
People in the left lane of the 4 lane roads wind up on the inner lane of the circle. If they stay on their road by exiting the circle, they have to cross the outer lane of the circle.
People entering on a 2 lane road wind up on the outer lane of the circle, and to stay on their road by staying on the circle, they have to cross the innermost of the 4-lane traffic exiting the circle.
There are short white stripes all over the place. For all I can tell, a tape truck exploded at the center. I can’t read their intent, especially when trying to deal with the traffic too.
Of the people in these two categories, who has the right of way? It seems like somebody has to yield even though they are not entering anything. My understanding of traffic circles is that the only yielding happens on entering. I got something wrong, here - which is it?
It sounds like a traffic engineer from Boston got fired for incompetence and moved to your area. No one here has ever figured out one of those things so we just resort to anti-social aggression augmented by vehicle size and/or hormones to sort things out in real-time. All they tell us here is that vehicles already in the circle have the right of way but that doesn’t always work in cases like you describe so I don’t think anyone ever thought about it.
I second the Google maps link. Is it a traffic circle (old school) or a roundabout (modern design)?
I read about a traffic circle in (I think) Belgium where it was intentionally ambiguous about who had right of way. There was no signage at all, and it ended up being safer than other traffic circles because everyone had to be on their best, most civil behavior.
I live in Maryland and haven’t a clue where this circle is, although it does sound sort of familiar. The only traffic circle I can think of that has an inner and an outer componant is Dupont Circle in DC, but that has 9 roads coming into it.
Think of the behaviour of traffic in the inner lane of the junction as that on a highway - when they need to get out of the junction, they merge into the outer lane, then exit. Either as one manoeuvre or two, depending on the nature of the road itself.
The rule for a circle is that traffic entering the circle must yield to traffic in the circle. Other than that I don’t think there are any other rules. You’re supposed to move inside when you enter and then back outside to leave, and despite the seemingly infinite potential for sideswipes they don’t seem to occur so often.
I grew up in Towson, and never really thought of this as a circle, just a really awful intersection.
>when they need to get out of the junction, they merge into the outer lane, then exit
>supposed to move inside when you enter and then back outside to leave
But I don’t think this is what the designers intended you to do. The roads that enter as two lanes going in the same direction also exit that way. That is, there is an inner lane exiting and an outer lane exiting. Who’d ever use the inner or left lanes on the exiting branch, according to the above rules?
>I grew up in Towson, and never really thought of this as a circle, just a really awful intersection.
Well, yeah!!! I mean, that’s why you left, isn’t it? See what I mean, everybody?
OK, this is an exception. What I’d hope would be that there’s signage on the two-lane approach to show this is the case. This is certainly what you’d get in Britain - something similar to (but not like) this (remove the left column, and make the straight-on arrow into a straight-on-or-right one). Plus arrows on the lanes themselves showing the same thing.
Cars entering the circle must yield to cars already in the circle.
You have to yield to the car on your left. This means the car on the inside has the right of way to exit across the outer lane.
Stay in the same lane when entering, moving around the circle and exiting.
If you are making an immediate right turn (one quarter of the circle), do it from the right lane. It is recommended that one half and three-quarters are done from the left lane.
In Alberta there are plenty of accidents in traffic circles because the above laws are ignored most of the time.
Seriously, I think this is the dumb way of doing it. I was driving in New England a few years ago, and it seemed to me that if you were stuck in the middle you stayed there until you could find a way out and that was more intuitive.
Edmonton had a city planner come over from the U.K. many years ago and he arrange to have about a dozen circles built. Over time, they have been relentlessly converted to standard intersections because of the number of accidents. There are about four left.
Gotta mind the traffic circle. I got pulled over by the MSU police on one of their little traffic circles because as we were arriving side by side, he paused longer at the yield sign, and I continued going into my traffic circle lane. He said I should have yielded right of way to him (since he arrived first), and that the traffic circle wasn’t really two lanes! He didn’t ticket me, mostly because he felt I wouldn’t have done anything so flagrant right next to him if I’d known better.
Of course cops don’t know everything, and I still insist he’s wrong to this day.
I drive through that traffic circle almost every day, and I’ve never found it intimidating. Yield to traffic already in the circle, first of all. I tend to stay to the right, unless I’m going nearly all the way around it. There are a couple lanes that are right-turn only, but not all the way through it. If you are heading north on York Road and want to continue on York or go to Dulaney Valley Road, you have to move over to the middle, because the right-hand lane becomes a turn lane for east-bound Joppa Road, but IIRC, that’s the only lane anomaly.
It’s much better than what used to be there. A horrible mess of lights and stop signs that NO ONE could figure out. Getting a red light meant waiting forever.
Went through DuPont circle last week, I wasn’t driving but if I was I think I’d come out at some random street somewhat close to what I intended.
I lived near a small traffic circle in the small town of Gordonsville VA. Five roads came into it, one with a stop sign. The circle was a single lane, but still greatly confused many out of towners, you heard screeching tires just about every day. But when you knew what you were doing, traffic flowed very smoothly.
>2) You have to yield to the car on your left. This means the car on the inside has the right of way to exit across the outer lane.
Ah, this is a specific rule that would work in the circle I describe. I wonder if it’s the rule here too.
>I drive through that traffic circle almost every day, and I’ve never found it intimidating.
Well, I guess many people manage it all the time. My hat’s off to you, though, because it sure throws me. I try to avoid it - and I have probably only gone through it 5 times in the 20 years I’ve known of it, anyway.
In addition to that, the people waiting to merge into the innermost (left) lane have a more difficult time gauging who will be turning and who will keep going.
On a big complex roundabout, you should only really be in the outer lane if you’re exiting. Whizzing round the whole thing in the outer lane prevents those on inner lanes and spiralling outwards as they’re meant to.
