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They take up a lot of space and they can be inconvenient and potentially unsafe to pedestrians. Unsafe for the same reason that right turns on red are unsafe: drivers are looking to their left for traffic and not to their right.

They were rare in the US before, I want to say, 15 or 20 years ago but I see them all the time now and new ones are always being installed. Good traffic devices, with the above tradeoffs in mind.

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I think right turn on red is usually a reasonable trade off and designers can always put no right on red signs if they think warranted.

Where roundabouts get bad is when they’re multi-lane and can get a lot of traffic. There’s one I se fairly regularly and I’m surprised there aren’t more accidents.

As a counterpoint, they're only slightly larger than a typical intersection and can have nice landscaping in the center. It makes for a much nicer urban environment.

Regarding pedestrian safety that seems like it should be easily solved by those flashing lights that they can trigger with a button. Or some other signal based solution.

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