What is a ‘modern roundabout’? I would consider this a roundabout. Since the fountain was built in 1937, I’d assume the roundabout was built before then.
This kinda sorta works, but needs to be more precise (and in the order that the driver will experience):
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“Veer right as you enter the traffic circle”
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“Take the 2nd right onto Mapcase Avenue” - And there had better be a readable sign on the roadway, placed according to guidelines established by road safety engineers, that says “Mapcase Avenue,” to go with what the GPS says.
If the evidence shows that fewer crashes and wait-times occur with rotaries than with intersections, I’m all for adopting them. But, just like any other part of the road system, they need to be done with safety and common sense in mind.
A British traffic engineer named Frank Blackmore invented the modern roundabout in 1966. There were circular intersections before that, but he came up with new rules that made them safer and all around better. The main change in rules is that traffic in the circle has the right of way. Before that, it was common for traffic in the circle to have to yield to entering traffic. Many rotaries have been updated to this rule, but there are still some that have not. Another thing was the size. Modern roundabouts are rarely over a couple hundred feet across, rotaries are up to 600 feet. When there’s more than one lane, drivers are not supposed to change lanes while in the circle. They should choose the right lane to enter and stay there. Rotaries often required lane changes. Also, there’s no pedestrian access to the center island in roundabouts. (The example you gave violated the last two rules.)
Roundabouts have improved since Blackmore invented them. The design of splitter islands (separating incoming and outgoing traffic at each leg) was subtly improved about 15 or so years ago. The newer ones do a better job of slowing incoming vehicles. Truck aprons have gotten bigger, and several other minor things have improved in recently made roundabouts.
Take the second exit works fine. There’s no need for “veer right”, as there is no other option, you must veer right onto the roundabout.
My GPS just says, “In 200 metres, at the roundabout, take the third exit.”
Exapno_Mapcase said his GPS would tell him to veer right, so I was just expanding on his description of what the GPS would typically say.
Of course you don’t actually need instructions to continue onward when there is no other option. But your comment reminds me of how I, a nervous driver, feel when my GPS goes silent.
For example, if the instruction is: “Turn left on Joseph Street and continue straight for 33 miles,” the GPS will then shut up for about 32 miles. Finally, it says something like, “Take exit 52 in 1 mile.”
I know that works for most people, but my joke is that there should be an “insecure driver” option that you can choose. I personally would like this setting. Every few minutes on the straight-away, it would say, “You’re doing fine. Keep driving straight, just like you have been.”
Even better if it could be programmed with my name. Then it would say, “You’re doing fine, CairoCarol. Keep driving straight, just like you have been.”
I realize that 99% of people would smash their GPS if it talked to them like that, but for the other 1% of us, it would relieve a lot of anxiety.
There’s a roundabout near us that’s was under construction for 2 years. The day before my coworker’s driving test, they rerouted the traffic according to the final plan. I saw the news article and told him, so he went and practiced for a few hours because that area is always on the driving test.
He passed.
Ah fair enough, I missed that.
Personally I can’t stand voice directions as I find they are either too verbose or don’t have enough detail. I prefer to just have the map on the screen, with the route defined, and look at it for directions when I know I’m approaching the next intersection.
“In brief, avoid.” 
When all cars are self-driving and interconnected, many, many cars should be able to take this, or any other complex intersection at full speed. Now that sounds like fun.
I’m pretty sure that @cytop is correct that it is in Xiamen and I’m also pretty sure that this is the actual location. It does appear that a road has been constructed over it since the original was taken and note that Google’s streets have a strange offset in Xiamen (if you look approximately 1500 feet or so to the ESE, you’ll see the streets that belong to this satellite image.
It’s my understanding that this is normal for China—they introduce intentional errors in maps for national security purposes. It’s kind of like how GPS had intentional degradation for civilian users for the first years of its existence.
Tell me about it— we’ve had several roundabouts installed in our general area (SE Michigan) in the last 10 years or so, and people STILL don’t get them. And they’re very simple- two lanes in each direction- left lane you either stay straight (stay on the same road) or turn left. Right lane you stay straight or turn right. I don’t know how many times I’ve been in the left lane going straight when somebody to the right of me turns left and I’ve slammed on the brakes to avoid them crashing into me.
Or the people who don’t get that you yield to enter the roundabout, and then you have right-of-way inside it. I was almost T- boned by a garbage truck that barreled into the roundabout one time.
I’ve even seen people going the wrong way in the roundabout. At one particularly dangerous, busy roundabout that seemed to have a fender bender once a week, they actually installed a blinder fence to slow people down because the road commission figured people were getting too cocky thinking they could beat the traffic, They wanted people to have to slow down coming up to it. So they decreased traffic visibility to try to improve traffic safety…???
Alas, paywalled.
The type solost mentions I have used and I have to say they are a stupid design.
Switching lanes in a circle is not a good thing. I have seen single lane ones on single lane roads and they are fine and work well, otherwise there are always drivers that are unfamiliar with it and that screws it up completely. When I lived in Denver they installed one in the old Lowry airbase and I used it regularly. I never got comfortable with it and as traffic on the road got busier it just got uglier and uglier.
True, strictly speaking, but in the U.S. people have this exaggerated sense of entitlement of personal freedom so tend to do things on the road that are anti-social, just because they can. It’s not IQ, it’s culture.
We have a mini-circle in our area that resolved a big traffic knot, but people still don’t understand that you may enter the circle if there is nobody there. Many drivers stop dead when they see a car about to enter the circle upstream until that car enters and goes past them, even though both cars could enter simultaneously with no violation of right-of-way nor interference.
The rules for yielding at a 4-way stop are so complicated I do not understand why people cannot learn the one and only rule for entering a roundabout.
Diverging Diamond Interchanges are a whole different animal than roundabouts. Curiously, they’re almost an exclusively American phenomenon so far. There’s a fair number of them in the US, but very few in other countries. And even in the US, they aren’t common everywhere. That one in Olympia is only the second one in the Northwest, for example. Here’s a interactive map of them. Somewhere (in the KC area, I think) there’s a DDI with roundabouts at either end. That makes things a bit strange because the incoming/outgoing lanes of the approach going across the freeway are swapped.
Multiple lane roundabouts sometimes have a higher accident rate (at least initially) than the crossroad intersection they replaced. But generally those accidents are minor; injury and fatality accidents are less common in roundabouts. Good roundabouts restrict visibility across the roundabout so drivers aren’t distracted by traffic they don’t need to be worrying about. But in the case you cite, it sounds like they also restricted visibility across one of the splitter islands.
I was able to get the location in Google Earth’s online version, which let me turn off the annoying offset streets and place names.
Now that I know where it is, it’s also easy to find some nice hi-res stock images of the circle, such as this one (that odd looking thing to the left is the MingFA Commercial Plaza):
There’s a traffic circle at Exit 35 on the New York State Thruway east of Syracuse (Carrier Circle) that has been there for decades and never improved, to my knowledge.
The exit leads to an intersection of two major roads, 635 and 298, both mainly industrial with heavy truck traffic. Obviously, many people coming off a Thruway exit will not be familiar with the area. They get shunted into the roundabout and have to decide which street they are going to. The hotel and restaurant area is off 298 east, three-quarters of the way around, so they have to pass by multiple exits to land there, including 298 west. Entering the Thruway from 635 (which leads to the most populated area) requires figuring out which of the several roads is the correct exit. I’ve gone through it dozens of times and it took forever to be comfortable with it. First-timers, even with GPS, must miss exits constantly.
I assume learner drivers in the USA are taught to navigate 4-way intersections, are they not also taught how to navigate the other types of junction such as roundabouts?