The American Roundabout

The American Roundabout

by Liv | Published on August 27th, 2010, 4:18 pm | News

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Apparently it's big news this week as Randolph county has opened up one of it's 5 new planned roundabouts.

Roundabouts are very popular in North Carolina, which ranks fifth in the state in their construction. NCDOT claims they are “traffic-calming” devices that slow the flow of vehicles and reduce serious accidents significantly, by half in some studies. cite

Apparently they're more efficient and safer, resulting in less accidents than traditional American style intersections. Something anyone who has driven overseas can tell you. They don't require power, telephone poles and don't go out when there is a storm or power outage.

Blakley, district engineer for the N.C. Department of Transportation in Randolph County, and his staff have embarked on a campaign to educate the public about using roundabouts because they’re new to the county.
cite

Apparently the only reason not to go to roundabouts is American sentiment and weirdness towards them. While I can't point to a specific point, just from reading through the above article and watching the news, people are overly concerned about the safety of the roundabout installed in Randleman. So much that the DOT did a "drive-thru" demo display for the media for news tonight.

In an age where stopping and going uses gas, expensive gas, shouldn't roundabouts be the default replacement for standard intersections when possible?

[BecauseHeLives]

Nope. Perhaps in some situations. But not as a rule.

[Jamy]

I'm for anything that reduces the use of electricity and fuel and increases safety. I wish they would put them all over Miami because nobody stops for stop signs or stop lights there....it's scary as hell to drive in that city.

[Liv]

Nope. Perhaps in some situations. But not as a rule.

To which point and why?

[Liv]

The NY TImes has been reading Greensboring apparently:

There’s just one problem: Americans don’t know how to navigate them.

Numerous studies have also found that replacing lights and stop signs with roundabouts can reduce harmful emissions by more than 30 percent because there is less starting and stopping.

Roundabouts are deemed safer than traditional intersections because their design precludes most high-risk situations. “You virtually eliminate right-angle crashes and head-on collisions, and the collisions that do occur tend to be much less severe,” said Anne McCartt, a senior vice president for research at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

Rodney Gernert, 39, was not persuaded by the success of roundabouts in countries like France, which has more than 30,000.

“Just because something works in one culture, doesn’t mean it’s going to work in another culture,” said Mr. Gernert, who teaches about world cultures at nearby Cedar Crest High School. “In our country, we don’t hang animals in our storefronts like other cultures. Food is different. Transportation, patience, people, their temperaments, are different from country to country.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/19/us/19roundabouts.html hattip

But just because our culture is different, doesn't mean we shouldn't try to improve it if someone has a better idea.

[Nfidel]

Apparently they're more efficient and safer, resulting in less accidents than traditional American style intersections. Something anyone who has driven overseas can tell you.

This seems to imply that "roundabout's", known as traffic circles on this side of the Atlantic, are new to these shores. They are only new to your generation. I learned to drive not 1/4 mile from one. For some reason they went out of fashion with street engineering departments in the 80's and most, if not all, in my area were removed when the intersections were enlarged. The newer ones seem to be of a much smaller diameter, possibly contributing to the evidence I frequently see for accidents at a specific circle. That one is strange though, in that it seems to have been built because of a church.

[A Person]

It's strange that road design becomes ideological. A cross was good enough for Jesus and roundabouts are socialist and unAmerican.