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Comment by brudgers | Hacker News Reader

They can and do build them.

The problem is that at intersections the normative behavior of American drivers is to queue and wait for your turn. Roundabouts assume a different behavior based on jumping the line.

Thus there is a lot of unpredictability regarding other drivers due to generations of driving patterns developed in diverse regional driving cultures...many of which are distinctly not-urban.

In addition, this roundabout is part of an Interstate Highway interchange. The US Interstate system is at a scale that doesn't occur elsewhere. It is transcontinental.

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> The problem is that at intersections the normative behavior of American drivers is to queue and wait for your turn. Roundabouts assume a different behavior based on jumping the line.

I don't think it's that different from turning right on red, or left without an arrow, or even merging on to the highway from an onramp (maybe that's the most similar, traffic in the others aren't flowing the same direction as you).

There is a roundabout near me that gets quite low traffic volume. I probably only have to even slow below 20mph about 10% of the time. The bigger risk is that the car in front of me is going to come to a complete stop at the yield sign despite the fact that you can see any potential conflicts at least 100 feet before the roundabout.

American drivers don’t know that a yield doesn’t require a stop and can’t think more than one or two seconds ahead of any possible conflict in traffic.

"American drivers are too safe" is a new complaint to me.

Stopping at yield signs when there is no other traffic is the opposite of safe.

even merging on to the highway from an onramp

Onramps with traffic lights are a thing in the US. They operate during rush hour.

I live near plenty of them, they still require to you merge with traffic after. You do "queue and wait for your turn", but immediately after you have to find a gap to insert yourself into before you run out of road.

Perhaps they need to start building more roundabouts on smaller intersections, and improve education in driving schools. Then give it time (decades).

The US has been building roundabouts for about 30 years.

It has a lot of intersections.

Reconfiguring intersections is expensive and disruptive. Stop signs and traffic lights take less space and are often the simplest thing that might work.

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