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Comment by hristov | Hacker News Reader

The greatest thing about roundabouts is that they protect against the idiot that goes through an intersection at full speed. He does that either because he is passed out behind the wheel or because he did not notice a stop sign and thought he had the right of way, or maybe because he just does not care.

Well with a roundabout if you just go straight ahead you hit the center circle. Good roundabouts always have a slight hill and some kind of barrier (a tree or some kind of statue) in the center so that the guy that just goes straight through will hit something in the center and wont come out the other side and will thus be less likely to kill an innocent person.

Single lane roundabouts are usually a good idea if the cost justifies it. Double and more lane roundabouts probably should be avoided in the US; they include rather obscure rules as to which lane you are allowed to drive in at any moment and americans do not like to learn new rules.

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As long as that center circle is high enough. I had a woman in a Toyota (Camry?) fly over one at about 45+mph and slam into me as I looped around it. Totaled her car, broke parts off my Explorer (repairable). Her son then tried to attack me with my bumper.

She kept insisting I turned in front of her (technically true, I was in a roundabout). She was arrested for drunk driving, and, later on, fined for all the flowers she damaged in the circle and the median she also ran over on her way into the intersection.

Sorry to hear about that. But the roundabout probably soaked up some of her speed at least.

Was there any kind of barrier within the circle besides flowers?

The curb she flew over and some brick paving stones used as the perimeter of the little garden, which was enough to stop non-drunk drivers, but no wall or anything.

I came up to a roundabout near Henley in the UK and saw a little lady in a big BMW driving around it the wrong way. It was particularly terrifying as I was on a motorbike. I dread to think what would have happened if I had got there a few seconds earlier.

Reminds me of this fine example of an idiot in a van using a roundabout to attempt orbital insertion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyufxcEQPGc

Most accidents in a roundabout don't happen this way. The severity of most accidents in roundabouts are reduced significantly vs a traffic light.

Drunk drivers have launched cars into all kinds of random shit and places where you would not expect an accident.

Good roundabouts always have a slight hill and some kind of barrier (a tree or some kind of statue) in the center

Interestingly enough, a new roundabout was installed in my neighborhood. We considered something pretty to look at in the middle, but the city said no way. "Emergency vehicles need to be able to go through the middle at full speed". Meanwhile, busses have zero issues negotiating the circle at normal driving speeds...

That.... sounds insane.

That's more like a trafic circle or whatever to call it. Used where there isn't enough space for a full roundabout. We had them close to school but they took them away again 20 years later. Since this was close to the fire station, emergency vehicles need to be able to go over them. Also busses because no space for them to drive around.

It certainly has some protection:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTk_kPeA63c (turn the sound off, its just road noise) This is what happens when you go full bore into a big roundabout.

This kind of roundabout is used to join one large road to one or more small road (think two lanes going from 6-12 on the clock, with single lane road at 3 & 9)

In the UK, we don't normally have stop signs, as most junctions have clear rights of way (https://www.rac.co.uk/drive/advice/road-safety/uk-road-marki... see "Give way to traffic on major road") In suburban roads, roundabouts are often used instead of stop signs. It allows much freer flowing of traffic in both heavy and light traffic.

Just don't look up the magic roundabout, thats just fucking batshit, we only have one. The reason why they keep it is because there is literally nothing else interesting about the place.

>The reason why they keep it is because there is literally nothing else interesting about the place.

Rude. ;0P

> we only have one

Actually there's another in Hemel.

Heavens to betsy, what have we done!?

> Just don't look up the magic roundabout, thats just fucking batshit, we only have one. The reason why they keep it is because there is literally nothing else interesting about the place.

Hemel, Swindon or England itself?

I was under the mistaken impression that Swindon was the only place mad enough to have magic roundabout, now I learn that H. Hempstead of Hertfordshire has one as well. bloody new town with their fancy town planners.

Not necessarily. Some roundabouts have the center circle partially paved so that oversize loads can drive right through if needed. There are curbs, speed bumps and road pillars that make it obvious for normal traffic not to take the shortcut.

It also doesn't fully protect vehicles already inside the roundabout. My father got rear-ended once while inside a roundabout by a possibly distracted driver and the car was a near write-off.

The main advantage of roundabouts is traffic fluidity. When compared to intersections with stop signs or traffic lights, unless it is full you can often enter a roundabout without coming to a complete stop first.

> Some roundabouts have the center circle partially paved

This is the "truck apron". Virtually every roundabout in our town has one, and it's up a little curb to get onto it. A little too much for cars to sensible abuse, but a dirt motorbike gets over them easily. :) Also when it snows in people can't tell where the apron starts, so traffic tends to cut over it.

> they include rather obscure rules as to which lane you are allowed to drive in at any moment and americans do not like to learn new rules.

Do they? I guess it probably depends on the country. Here in Sweden I'm pretty sure you can drive in whatever lane you like (unless they're explicitly labeled). But normal lane-swithching rules apply ofc and, importantly, when you enter a roundabout you have to yield to traffic in all lanes of the roundabout, not just the outermost one.

Yeah here in Australia, 2 lane roundabouts usually require that people taking the 1st exit use the outermost lane and people using the 3rd+ exits use the inner lane of the roundabout. (And if you’re going straight you can use either). If you’re in the inner lane of the roundabout and want to leave, you usually don’t change lane while in the roundabout, but signal and exit by cutting across the outer lane on your way out.

> but signal and exit by cutting across the outer lane on your way out.

That's how most of the multilane ones are are in my part of the US, and that's what makes them terrifying to me. It requires too much trust that the other drivers are going to do the right thing.

The protection is just by hiding half of the traffic beyond an obstacle, you can still get t-boned on the roundabout, but only by the cars from your right and not from both directions like on an intersection. I guess it's a plus but with the added danger of a head-on collision from people traversing the roundabout in the wrong way I won't say if it's net-positive safety-wise with any degree of confidence.

I have never seen anyone go the wrong way around a roundabout, and I've never heard anyone tell me they've seen it. It's so rare you can ignore it.

I, on the other hand, have seen much fewer people running red (and that only when the red just switched on, without any cross traffic yet) than people taking left on a roundabout. So by your own method you can ignore people running red light on an intersection?

I’ve seen it, once. Fortunately the motorcycle rider coming the correct way spotted her in time.

I have seen two cars but we have an extraordinarily amount of roundabouts so plenty of samples. Those two was in a roundabout that is a bit straighter than normal roundabout so it is possible to turn the wrong way without too much hassle but you still have to be pretty unused to roundabouts to manage it.

It can happen to foreigners in a left-side-traffic country when they are used to right-side traffic. Or vice versa.

It also greatly reduces the impact of being t-boned by cars coming from the right. The car coming from the right has to slow down in order to take the roundabout. This means you are now getting t-boned by a car going 30mph rather than 60mph, which is the difference a fatal accident and walking away with barely a scratch.

Cars going the wrong way is a non-issue. It is clearly signed how you're supposed to drive, and if they constructed it properly going the wrong way means you have to do a left turn of about 120 degrees. It feels so unnatural that you'll have trouble doing it on purpose, let alone accidentally.

> The car coming from the right has to slow down in order to take the roundabout.

Why? We are talking about people, who don't pay attention and drive through an intersection, the same people won't pay attention and won't slow down, let pedestrians to cross and do other silly things in the video.

> It is clearly signed how you're supposed to drive

I don't know where you live, but roundabouts near me have no signage of any kind. They are intersections with the center removed, on one near my home I've been seeing the same woman doing a left turn once a week (we seemed to have the same schedule so going there around the same time). Not to mention that many people don't pay attention to whatever signage you will put up, it's not a magic spell.

Why? Well, because it should be physically impossible not to. A roundabout forces you to take a sharp right turn, with a small turning radius.

It's like turning right at a T junction. You simply can't do that at high speeds because you will flip your car. Most drivers have enough self-preservation to prefer slowing down over crashing their car.

I have a $6000 bill to show you for a physically impossible Toyota driving into my passenger door on a roundabout. A roundabout is just collection of T-intersections, nothing forces you to take right turn, you can drive straight, right, or left, physically.

And as for the self-preservation, running a red light on a normal intersection is doubly dangerous as you are risking both frontal and side collisions from both sides, if self-preservation is how roundabouts are safer then a normal intersection is doubly so (it is not, people who cause accidents are not guided by self-preservation).

I knew a guy who didn't stop at all-way stop signs. His thinking was: if everyone else is going to stop, why should I?

two of those guys would cancel out.

> The greatest thing about roundabouts is that they protect against the idiot that goes through an intersection at full speed.

Who is protected exactly?

https://c.tenor.com/GLRaFTDEqngAAAAd/roundabout-poland.gif

https://c.tenor.com/0YMymTe85q8AAAAd/roundabout-car.gif

For the first one here's a video about it: https://youtu.be/aniguxnz9ik?t=9 It jumped around 7m high and 64m far.

there's a few videos if you look, this one was popular

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTk_kPeA63c

That is the worst audio waveform I have ever been subjected to.

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