Guest Post by John Stossel
I hate waiting at traffic lights.
There’s a solution: traffic circles, or roundabouts.
Traffic circles terrified me when I first confronted them in Europe. A movie, National Lampoon’s European Vacation, captured my experience when it portrayed Chevy Chase driving in London, unable to exit a rotary all day.
Besides being hard to navigate, I also assumed roundabouts cause problems, but a Freakanomics podcast woke me to their advantages. Roundabouts are a reason Britain’s rate of traffic deaths is less than half the U.S.’s.
We’ve converted almost all of our traffic lights to roundabouts because we save lives, says the mayor of Carmel, Indiana, Jim Brainard. His little town now has 133 roundabouts.
A University of Wisconsin-Madison study confirmed that roundabouts save lives. Roundabouts increased crashes a bit, but deaths and injuries dropped by 38 percent.
It’s because of the angle of the cars, says Brainard. Instead of a T-bone, you got a sideswipe.
Roundabouts also slow cars down a little, giving drivers more time to react.
That makes it seem like it’ll take longer for cars to get through intersections, I say to Brainard.
It really doesn’t, he responds. A roundabout moves 50 percent more traffic than a traffic light.
More than a four-way stop sign intersection, too, according to a test ran by the TV show Mythbusters.
Roundabouts are also better for the environment. You never come to a complete stop, Brainard points out. Tremendous amounts of fuel are saved.
Indianapolis realtor Jason Compton says roundabouts even increase the value of homes because they just flat out look better (by adding) more green space.
Sometimes communities put artwork in the middle.
Bottom line: Roundabouts are safer, cost less, move more traffic and are better for the environment.
Yet, most Americans still say, I don’t want these things. I tell Brainard. They’re confusing. I’m more likely to have an accident!
Well, it takes public education, he responds. Chevy Chase didn’t do us any favors.
Brainard points out that Chase was stuck in a large rotary, not a roundabout. Some traffic circles and rotaries have many lanes. The one by Paris’ Arc De Triomphe connects 12 roads!
Those are dangerous, says Brainard. That’s not what we’re building. Modern roundabouts are small; the smaller they are, the safer they become. They’re very different.
Europe learned that lesson. European countries are building lots of small roundabouts.
America is way behind, I tell Brainard.
America is catching up, he replies. When I started, we probably had under a couple of hundred in the United States. Today, we’re pushing five or six thousand.
That’s progress.
Still, his little town, with just 97,000 residents, has 2 percent of all the roundabouts in America.
John Stossel is author of “Give Me a Break: How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media.”
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Roundabout etiquette from the Brits, translated for US driving: turn on left blinker whilst entering the roundabout and flip to the right blinker just prior to reaching your exit. The exception being: first exit is your exit, then right blinker only.
Mr. Stossel doesn’t get out very much these days apparently: the concept of a traffic circle captivates his imagination because it “…saves lives.” rather than the enslavement of Humanity to the NWO/Beast System.
While it may move cars quicker, it is much less safe for pedestrians and cyclists. Because cars are never forced to stop, pedestrians need to wait for breaks in traffic, even when there are theoretical crosswalks. Even the best roundabouts, pose a special problem for pedestrians who are blind or have a disability. Unlike at a traffic light, vehicles in roundabouts never come to a complete stop, and pedestrians must instead rely on timing gaps between traffic. This is tricky for those with visual impairments or those who are unable to cross a lane of traffic quickly.
Legislation requires traffic must yield to pedestrians, just like the locations where pedestrians cross channelized right turns to reach the island. So, no, pedestrians don’t have to (legally) wati for a break in traffic, but yes, its more dangerous since drivers don’t want to yield as the law requires.
This is a feature, not a bug.
Most of the roundabouts in the U.K. are on major A roads and motorways, not in built up areas where there are pedestrians and cyclists. Though we do have mini roundabouts in residential areas which are pretty useless. Most cars seem to drive over them rather than go round them. Where there are a lot of exits off a roundabout there are traffic lights too.
something tells me no sane person gives a shit about traffic circles. in a few years it’s gonna be walking for most of us and a horse and buggy for the more well to do. motorized vehicles will be a rarity and even if one has one still functional and still has fuel for it, it’d be an opsec nightmare (and after a few more years it wont be roadworthy anyway).. thus after the few years plus a few more years, pretty much guarantee anybody still using a motorized vehicle is one of the ruling class or their enforcers, and the smart ones will have also learned that they stick out like a sore thumb. any such vehicle that even slows down, much less comes to a stop, without a squad of armed goons guarding it, will almost certainly be vandalized.
so yeah… traffic circles? maybe that argument mattered for like 5 minutes right at the peak of wealth and narcissism in the late 60s or early 70s.
maybe an exception, tractors will probably stick around for a few years longer, in some places.
Buy an electric car (golf cart?)and have the solar panels to charge it up. It’s not rocket science. Use the batteries to run stuff at home when not driving.
Must be a slow news day in the Stossel brain cells.
When I was in England I got used to driving on the left fairly easily. Crossing the street was much harder as I ALWAYS looked in the wrong direction …. came fairly close to being hit by a bus in London.
Anyway, Roundabouts were a real bitch. I liken it to Bumper Cars … weaving and dodging, and hoping like all fuck I don’t kill someone, or get myself killed ….. while ignoring all the Middle Finger salutes from irate Brit drivers. Fun times, indeed.
Almost got my ass run over in Hong Kong looking the wrong direction.
I was terrified driving in Japan, because my ADD can’t handle that.
You really haven’t experienced true terror until you’ve rolled off a red eye 11 hr flight and landed in Belfast, picked up your rental car with a stick shift and CLUTCH ( the horror ) and exited onto the highway and then encountered ( wait for it ) not 1, not 2 but 3 successive multi lane and multi exit ( 5 each ) roundabouts. That’s assuming that you actually found your way out of the airport in the first place. It’s also assuming that it’s not pouring rain and dark which add another element to the terror. It was one of the most exhausting, draining things I’ve ever experienced. Somehow, I lived to tell the tail….
Tale. You lived to tell the tale.
Roundabouts do cause problems. People do not have the capability to coordinate “merging” or “zipper”.
They are a blast in a tractor trailer rig!
I find this is strange thing for Stossel to comment about; surely in these times there are more pressing issues worthy of journalistic commentary? As far as I know, he has no background in transportation engineering. But since I have over 30 years experience as a professional in this very field, and have designed several of these myself, I can tell you there are pros and cons to these forms of intersection control, whether they are traffic circles or roundabouts. (aside: rotaries are a thing of European origin, since most of the street networks in the core of European cities predate the automobile).
They are best for suburban/rural applications, but significantly less so for dense city areas. Their actual performance improvements vs. traffic signals based on volume-capacity ratios are only realized for situations where low volume minor roads meet higher volume arterial or collector roads. They can’t be used for intersections of high volume roads with high volume roads. They also consume more real estate and have higher material costs than traditional intersections, often offsetting the cost saved for the signal system not required. And yes, they statistically “change” the severity and nature of collisions, depending on the underlying specifics, like sightlines, geometry, etc. of the locations where they are installed. Can they provide benefit in both costs and efficiency of operation? Yes, but only in specific circumstances. Are they some kind of traffic panacea to cure all our roads congestion and safety issues? Hardly.
Stossel never lived in Switzerland, it seems.
That country is littered with roundabouts. Within city limits I’d say “fine, whatever.”
But driving overland (off the freeways) becomes: accelerate to 50mph (their speed limit), drive for half a mile, brake down to 25mph to go through some roundabout, accelerate to 50mph again for half a mile ’til the next roundabout… ad infinitum.
Even as a motorcycle driver, where quick acceleration and deceleration is the SOP, that starts to feel completely stupid very quickly.
The difference between European drivers and American drivers is in Europe you have to pay attention to your driving and what other drivers around you are doing, whereas American drivers want to be drinking their coffee and talking on their phone and the hell with everyone else. European drivers are fairly aggressive and that works fine when it comes to roundabouts. What you don’t want to encounter in a roundabout is the timid driver, they will totally screw up the rhythm and flow of traffic.
Just yesterday I watched a timid driver completely screw up a right turn.
Roundabouts are stupid. My small town spend installed a couple because Fed was contributing a portion of the cost. These are on the main roads coming into town. The cross streets have absolutely no traffic so they’re just another obstacle for cars and totally muck things up for cyclists and pedestrians.
Our liberal local government seems to like them because they’re “european”.
Apparently this LOLbertz loon hasn’t seen semi trucks hauling freight and equipment try to navigate the stupid make money for politicos roundabouts. And everywhere local they have been installed , crashes have increased…but hey, at least you didn’t get T-boned. John Strosssel is a waterboy for big dumbass, make work government. .
Yup
First time I watched traffic at the Arc De Triomphe back in the 90s, was amazed…how the hell aren’t there multiple wrecks?
We have a traffic circle on the way into town on SC 802. Actually, it works. But, we have scant semi traffic there. And no buzzy motorbikes like Paree.
It makes sense for a historic landmark regardless of efficacy.
Roundabouts must be trending. Stossel was always an ad revenue shill and he’s an idiot besides.
Americans CAN NOT HANDLE ROUNDABOUTS!!!!1!! Do you see how crazy this makes me? Look at the number of exclamation points.
In another shitty anecdote, my late aunt, who would have loved this site, took bets with her neighbors how many crashes would occur after the roundabout was implemented in her backyard.
Thank Odin I’m not a libertarian anymore and think shit like this matters in Current Year +?
It doesn’t.
Roundabouts increased crashes a bit, but deaths and injuries dropped by 38 percent.
Let’s stick with straight intersections.
The 38% less deaths and injuries is that many more situationally unaware drivers still on the road due to roundabouts.