That’s a turbo roundabout, not a magic roundabout. The main difference between a turbo and an ordinary roundabout is that you can’t change lanes while in the turbo. There’s raised lane dividers to keep everyone in their lane. So it’s important that drivers get in the correct lane before entering.
From news reports, there’s at least three turbos in the US and about the same number in the UK. There may be more that haven’t been in the news. But the Magic Roundabout in Swindon is not one of them.
This old American finds the thought of changing lanes in one of those things really scary. After popping out the wrong exit, turning around and going for it again would be confusing to say the least.
WeirdEST is hard to quantify. THIS is what passes for normal in my life.
I’ve driven down Lombard St. in SF - in a stick shift, and not on purpose. (The friend who was navigating chortling all the way.)
I survived a “squeeze zone” in Boston - where the trolley and the parked cars left about half an inch on either side of my Oldsmobile.
And I’ve driven some mountain back roads in WV which may or may not have been logging trails. definitely not meant for a sedan.
But I think WeirdEST was an experimental mile of road on Rt. 66 West in Virginia. It was made of recycled plastic. The ride just felt strange in every way. Smoother, softer, better, but uncanny valley-ish. Every hair I own was standing up and although I wasn’t sliding or having any traction problems I felt a sense of panic as if I were. From what I’ve read those roads are a vast improvement in almost every category, but I can see how adoption is going to be a problem.
Dude drives up Zig Zag Hill:
He does it in the winter when there is no foliage for extra fun. Yet makes it look easy. He always is shown with both hands on the wheel where with my little cars any grade > 10% is negotiated in first gear (for the most part). No idea if auto’s make it easier yet HP helps.
Ironically, it’s just when he hits the leveling out portion and rolls the credits was where I breathed a sigh of relief then vroom vroom the clutch would not engage. Then it started pouring.
That certainly qualifies as a stupid adjective. In the UK, you are allowed to change lanes in roundabouts. Don’t cut anyone off, and signal your intentions and usually it’s okay. For young partial-license drivers they have “L” magnets/stickers here and even “P” which somehow means “new driver” and it’s asking some courtesy to give them some room and a break if they mess up.
If you truly mess up (when google says take the third exit and you miss that) you can stay in the right lane of the roundabout. As long as you keep saying, “Look kids, there’s Big Ben” even though nowhere near that part of London is there a roundabout.
I was starting to become very worried as my signal stick was broken and I had to coax it to show right turns as L/P/crappy driver it will be your fault if you approach oncoming traffic and whip into the mini-roundabouts to go right (or I guess left yet rights are the ones you definitely want oncoming traffic to know).
That makes our “Spaghetti Junction” in the UK look quite tame !
I think I’d blocked the interchange in Springfield DC out of memory. I’d vote it as the weirdest interchange I’ve been on. Definitely the most uncanny. Since if you’re going north and going counterclockwise on the loop, you need to take the left exit which will then very gradually move you up and then to the right. It feels very unnatural. More unnatural than even a diverging diamond interchange because in those, even though you are funneled in a weird direction in general, every move makes sense relative to its alternative.
Rio Rancho, NM got its start as mostly a giant real estate scam. As part of it the scammers graded a big grid of dirt roads in the mesa. Even with the expansion of the city there’s still plenty of that empty grid you can go driving on and it tends to be a favorite for illegal dumping.
Not the weirdest, but getting ugly fast: In northern New Mexico the Rio Grande Gorge cuts off easy travel between Taos to the east and parts west. These days US-64 is carried over the bridge that was built in the 1960s. As I was vacationing in the area one year, I saw on the map that it was possible to go further down the river, past a lot of campgrounds in the state park, cross the river on a small bridge at basically grade, then up the other side and west to where I was headed. So I gave it a shot. The climb out of the canyon quickly became basically one and a half lane dirt road with quite a drop into the river on one side and no guards of any kind. A rather nerve-wracking drive and one I have no intention of ever doing again.
That looks like a plate of spaghetti, not a road map. 
My total lack of sense of direction would lead to huge trouble if I were to ever get sucked into that mess.
As the street was approaching the water, they realized that they had to make a decision about whether or not they wanted to go to all the time and effort needed to build a bridge. They had to do something, though, so they decided to end it with a parking lot. LOL
Looking at Google streetview it isn’t too evil. But it certainly forces a lot of one traffic stream crossing the other.
Ultimately roundabouts/traffic circles work fantastic when there is just one lane of traffic. Once the traffic volume exceeds what one lane can carry, there’s no avoiding the need to change lanes while entering, circulating, or exiting. Maybe all 3. Fun stuff.
Not as crazy as that, but we do have something similar here in Portland as far as feeling unnatural goes: traveling west on I-84, with the intent of going to the west side of the metro area or beyond.
I-84 ends at I-5. I-405 loops around downtown Portland, meeting up with I-5 both north and south of downtown. Then, US-26 starts on the west side of downtown, at I-405. Hopefully this shows up correctly:
So to get from I-84 to US-26, the shorter route is to take I-5 south to I-405 to US-26. Once on I-5, get in the left lane and stay there. Shortly the freeway splits into I-405 and I-5, and before long you find yourself in the right lane, even though you’ve made no lane changes.
I screwed this up many times when I first moved here. It feels so unnatural - it’s hard to resist the the urge not to move over to the right when transitioning from I-5 to I-405, knowing that you’ll need to take the US-26 off-ramp soon. But if you change lanes, you’ll be in an exit-only lane and get dumped into downtown Portland.
Sadly, stuff like this is fairly commonplace in the Hub of the Universe.
Not if it’s a properly designed roundabout. Multiple lane roundabouts should have the lanes spiral out, so if you get in the correct lane at the beginning, you should be able to exit without crossing another lane.
Which implies that you will need to cross at least one lane to get into the correct lane, yes?
Sometimes, but not always. But if you do, it’s right where you enter and the lane you’re entering is a new one. That is, there’s no traffic from the left (or right, depending) to worry about. You have to avoid traffic in the lane you cross, but not the lane you enter.
The Boston University Bridge between Boston and Cambridge is sometimes said to be the only place in the world where an airplane can fly over a car that’s driving over a train that’s driving over a boat. (It may be the only such location that’s not a combined rail-and-road bridge.)
There’s a similar arrangement near me. Maybe it qualifies and maybe it almost does.
The waterway is much smaller and only small pleasure craft fit under the railroad bridge spanning the waterway while a boulevard overpass snakes over the top of both. There’s even a small airport nearby such that planes pass overhead every day. Whether they go directly over the bridges is another matter. But they might and certainly could.
The “almost” qualification is, as you can see, the road overpass crosses over the train tracks just past the water, not directly over it. So an auto can drive over one part of a passing train while the railcars just a few cars away are over the water and above a boat.
Back when I had a small boat it was semi-fun to sit right next to or even directly under the railroad bridge while a 50mph freight train went by just a few feet away or immediately above you. Horrifically noisy experience. And like a rollercoaster, feels alarmingly dangerous just sitting there despite being utterly safe. Unless a very unlikely failure happened just then and there. In which case you’d be burgerized instantly.
What about a road that is not a road? On Federal Blvd in Denver, there is a stoplight that functions just like any other intersection would. It is timed (not on demand) and allows ample time for cross traffic. Thing is
It has a physical median so you could only turn right.
The east roadway is the parking lot of an apartment
The west roadway is a walking trail on the Sanderson Gulch.
There are two other places where you can meet the criteria (Portland, Oregon and Lisbon, Portugal) but as you said, both of those are combined rail/road bridges.