Love them! Just got back to the US after driving around Portugal and Spain. I especially love the ones that replace what would typically be a string of 4 way stops with traffic lights. It is great, especially when there’s no traffic, to be constantly moving rather than stopping, waiting, and starting. Also, can’t complain about the huge (well studied and documented) impact on safety.

Edit: Also, I hate traffic circles! My wife and I use the 4 way stop, traffic circles, and roundabouts as analogies of different types of solutions. Roundabouts are the ideal solution (saves lives, land, $$, etc.), 4 way stops are less than ideal solutions that work, and traffic circles are the worst of both worlds.

people here don’t know how to use them’, both of which are just symptoms of not having used them enough yet.

Idk, where I live they only have two roundabouts in the entire city and they are on the same street that’s primarily used for work commuting. They’ve both been there since the 60’s, people still suck at them.

I’m not sure if it’s just that people don’t use them often enough, or if it’s just certain demographics like the elderly just have a hard time learning past a certain age.

There are also complaints by truck drivers.

To them it is easier to drive straight than to swerve.

Also, they need to be able to quickly depart before the next car comes along, which is notorious when dragging a heavy load.

This is a common urban legend but roundabouts are safer and flow better even if people use them incorrectly.

People use this logic to argue against them but the reality is that congestion improves and dangerous accidents are reduced by the install of a roundabout regardless of driver exposure or education to the pattern.

Making them inappropriately large actually does significantly reduce their benefit though because it increases traffic speeds and thus gets rid of one of their primary reasons roundabouts work so well: that they reduce speed. And no, reducing speed does not cause traffic congestion. In fact in most cases it reduces congestion and in so doing shrinks local trip times by reducing time stopped for the drivers.

I was hoping they’d been around long enough that driver’s education would teach it and older generations would pick it up.

I feel like people’s aren’t very interested in learning them, which is the only real bummer in my opinion.

Also,.Carmel put one in that’s super small, it’s not my favorite. People start acting like it’s not an intersection.

Having said that, I drove through a town in Scotland, that literally just painted a white circle in the middle of the intersection. It was weird. I assume to save money or since there wasn’t much space, but it negates the ability for the landscape to stop a run through driver.

Carmel police call the circles drunk traps because people tend to plow into the middle, which is way better than head on. Plus it stops them from going longer travel distance I guess.

I least I know of someone indifferent now 😄

I find one issue with multiple lanes is people assuming the inside lane driver will be continuing around instead of existing. This leads to drivers taking the outside lane and hitting someone as they are exiting.

It’s probably confusing to read that, but the golden rule I preach to people is yield to cars in the circle regardless of their lane and wait for them to pass by right as you pull out. Can’t go wrong that way.

You have information? My lazy search said Edgar Hooker, Englishman. I’m a bit curious now.

The American version had traffic lights and people had to stop while on the circle.

It was the Homo erectus of roundabouts.

Dude that sucks, that would be so annoying.

As a reminder since everyone constantly needs to hear it: the safety and flow benefits of a roundabout do not care about whether people “know” how to yield.

Even if you do the totally wrong thing at a roundabout, it’s still way better. Speeds are reduced and angles of conflict improved. It’s just geometry.

Sucks that people feel a need to bonk in non life threatening situations. That’s just a symptom of the immense cognitive dissonance that is driving, especially in North America. We put people on giant roads in huge, fast armored boxes then tell them they need to be polite and move slow and patiently, with constant stops and interruptions and distractions. It just fucks with human psychology. Driving is a terrible experience and the only reason most people think they like it is because we’ve deliberately made every alternative as bad as possible.

Interestingly, but not surprising, there’s a shopping mall called Clay Terrace in Carmel that is basically walkable strip mall.

It has a lot of cross walks and two circles. I find there’s people who yield readily because they know the area is intended for pedestrians, and some treat it like regular roads. They put up flashing crossing lights when people pass sensors. That helped a lot.

You will never convince me that two (or more) lane roundabouts make any sense. Unless its the type where one lane is forced to go out, that does work but its not really two lanes anymore then.