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Comment by adam | Hacker News Reader

Also relevant: replacing 4-way's with roundabouts in Carmel, IN: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/20/climate/roundabouts-clima...

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I'm not sold, yet, on roundabouts improving safety over four-way stops. Pedestrians at regular intersections are pretty easy to spot. But when you come up to a typical roundabout, the road is twisting a little, you're looking to see what traffic is approaching the roundabout, and the crosswalk is usually right in the area where the road is twisting to line up for roundabout entry.

I don't know that I have any suggestion, though, to make it better other than try to keep pedestrians far enough from the roundabout that drivers can easily focus on them and not be distracted by more moving parts.

The argument that you are only crossing half the road at a time is fairly compelling, though. I guess there's a trade-off there.

Roundabouts where pedestrian traffic is expected should have the zebra crossing set back some meters before the actual roundabout, which makes the pedestrians move perpendicularly to traffic in all cases, where their visibility is higher.

https://www.craftontull.com/insights/insight_posts/view/63/p...

The big win as a pedestrian is you only have one direction to worry about at a time..

Roundabout have pedestrian crossing at the entrance - before you meet cars. Plus, they naturally force you to slow anyway.

I cross one frequently and it's still pretty dangerous because cars rarely signal roundabout exit. As a pedestrian it's hard to predict if a car will exit, and drivers are also often distracted at that moment / looking down at gps (did I take the right/wrong exit)?

Have you seen roundabouts of this scale in person? They aren’t meant for people to be around at all

Hahaha. Are you joking? It's somewhat rare in Europe not to have a roundabout like this. They are clearly way better for pedestrians. You only have to cross half the road before you get to a safer place.

Compare this intersection which seems to have been somewhat recently upgraded:

From https://www.google.com/maps/@39.9679819,-86.1403832,3a,75y,2...

https://www.google.com/maps/@39.9679454,-86.1403837,3a,75y,2...

Notice that there is also now a bend in the road so a car physically has to slow down to navigate it, unlike miles of straight traffic light intersections.

I'm a huge roundabout advocate but the user you replied to is correct. Despite the Carmel roundabout looking safer, when you're there, you don't feel like pedestrians are considered. I've driven through them.

Smaller roundabouts in narrower streets feel safer for pedestrians even if the islands are smaller. It's really the street size that is doing the work and the smaller roundabout works in conjunction with the street size to make cars behave more like they're in a turn and not a road with curves in it.

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