Surprising UK export conquering US: Roundabouts

That one's AWESOME. At every entry point they have a bus shelter and a bus bench, seriously degrading your ability to see the traffic in the roundabound.

I'd like to be the first to point out that those animated cars are driving on the wrong side of the road.

Have a couple in my hometown in Indiana. They really(REALLY) helped clear up congestion on several roads.

People still have issues driving around them though, it can get quite funny.

There's a really brilliant one in the east bay that has bypasses for all the right turns. So it looks like a traffic circle surrounded by hyperbolas. Works beautifully.

And there's the shittiest one in Ohio, which rather than being a traffic circle, is a traffic theta (ϴ). With traffic lights. Worst idea EVER.

You are all lightweights compared to how bad things used to be. Here is an example of a....I don't know what it's called exactly. This was in Augusta back in the fifties or something. But basically you had to watch for cars cutting across at your 10 o'clock, cars cutting across at your 2 o'clock, and merging at your 4 o'clock (assuming you're on the straight part to begin with). And there were no traffic lights - everything was just threading the needle and hoping for the best at 35 or 40 MPH.

Where I live and drive most people.

1) Don't understand how a four way stop works.
2) Don't turn their lights on in fog or rain.
3) Don't know what a turn signal is.
I have no confidence in their ability to grasp the concept of a round about.

I do think roundabout intersections help traffic many times, but I hate it that people DON'T USE THEIR TURN SIGNAL as they are approaching the roundabout.

Maybe the people in the town I live in here just haven't figured it out yet, but it totally defeats the purpose of keeping traffic moving, if everyone is basically coming to a full stop anyway.

If you are going forward in your lane, no signal. If you are going left, you can only be in the left lane, and please turn on your left signal. Same thing if you are turning right -- stay in the right lane only to turn right, and turn on your right signal.

I remember when I lived in Switzerland and was getting a driving lesson from a Swiss friend. She impressed very clearly on me that you must remember turn signals when approaching a roundabout. If everyone did this here, traffic would also move much faster.

Jeez, I'm grateful if drivers use their turn signals at all.

Except for the asshat who signals for three blocks and then doesn't turn.

You dont drive. So how can something like that bother you?

Some asshat hipster had the brilliant idea to put a small-ish roundabout at the local airport as part of the new terminal set-up. The really brilliant part? Only one lane, and it would have been better as a standard T-intersection. The plows that clear the road off have a tough time effectively clearing it in the winter, and the semi trucks that haul the mail to and from the airport have a tough time negotiating it year-round.

Not surprising to me. Roundabouts would save more energy than anything the Obama or the greenies could think of. You don't have to stop, then you don't have to start off again. Traffic slows but keeps moving. Its not just the UK but all of Europe. They work well, especially when they are laid out well with the question mark sign before you enter one.

Call me crazy (many do) but when it comes to traffic, I don't like anything where there can possibly be judgement call or poor communication or variables.

Thus, "taking turns", merging into traffic, who has the right of way except for situation x, or anything that can possible be interpreted differently by piss me off.

I like nice square intersections, stop-and-go traffic signals (no blinking yellow/blinking anything) etc. Improvising and "going with the flow" are great most of the time but behind the wheel I like things cut-and-dried.

Yeah? Well I like a hilly dirt road with no stop signs, and tall fields of corn on all sides.

I'm torn. Roundabouts are more efficient obviously. But it's so much easier to drive in the US than it is in Europe.

I have a comment about navigating in Europe. Not talking about the UK because I never drove there - this applies to continental Europe, Germany in particular.

Would it kill you to put the general direction of travel (North, South, etc.) on your freeways and secondary roads? In other words...let's say I know Munich is to the South. Theoretically if I take an alternate route on my day's journey to see other sights along the way, I would never get lost if every time I got back on a main road it would say 12 Sud or 12 Nord.

But no.....they put the name of some town with a population of 500 and EXPECT you to know that Schmidendorfer is 24K away, and between your starting point and Munich. How about putting the name of the biggest town along Route 12 like..I don't know...MUNICH? Hell, any town on my map would be great - I could match up the town on the sign with names of towns on my map, and know what general direction I'm heading.

In Czech, It was worse oldfellah. The only saving grace was that they now have E-highways. These keep that same number when you change countries, that way you can stay on the E-67 from Calais to Warsaw.

Eh... just look up.

Look it up as I'm driving down the road? I was there 2000-2003, so I didn't have a portable device with the internet on it. Still don't, but that's beside the point.

But do you see my point? To me it makes sense to have general N-S-E-W signs. Failing that, distance to major towns/cities that would actually be on a map would be a good option.

Not look IT up. Look up - in the sky. Where's the sun?

I do agree, tho. I prefer road signs to have directions.

Sun's not much use when it's behind thick clouds. Or at night. 'S kind of why we don't use sundials all the time anymore.

I wasn't serious. Even on a sunny day, trying to find direction only helps when it's morning or evening.

Rotaries are a UK export? They're all over the place in Massachusetts. I grew up with them and never found them complicated in the slightest, and they do seem to make things go a lot faster.

Can't get used to seeing them called "roundabouts," though. It makes me think of Dave Barry's riff on British English that ends with "... pop 'round the gorn-and-scrumbles, and Jack's a doughnut, there you are!"

Yes she does. She drives you up the wall.

E67 goes to Calais?

What's even more fun is when I have to go through on a bike on 39th. It's on a hill!

That's a nice part of roundabouts. I don't want to see them used anywhere except in light-traffic intersections, though, because there's the possibility of heavy traffic stranding someone coming from an unpopular direction.

Bwahahaha!

Those would never work in Chicagoland. The same reason we don't use blinkers - never let the enemy know your next move. Drivers would not allow merging traffic to merge.

Technically, a roundabout is a specific kind of circular intersection. Wikipedia has a great article about the whole thing.

I just went out to do some errands. Maybe ten miles total at the most, probably several less.

I went through 13 roundabouts. At only one of them did I have to stop, for about 30 seconds or so.

I also went through 15 traffic lights. 6 of them only turn red when someone is coming, and no one was coming or was going to be coming, because they are for coming out of factories that aren't working today (Saturday). So I really only went through 9 traffic lights that counted for something. I had to stop at 7 of them, once while I waited for two cycles.

I feel sorry for those who admit on a public forum that they find them difficult, confusing, and intimidating. It fuels my sense of superiority to know that not only do I have no problem with them at all, my kids don't have any problem with them at all, either. They both drive through roundabouts without hesitation, even though they've only had their driver's licences for a few years.

I wonder if these roundabouts have anything to do with Albert putting the lift kit under his Jeep.