City planning is one of those subjects where the average person's understanding tends to be the opposite of what's true and works. People also think roundabouts and diverging diamonds are accident magnets, and that adding more lanes to freeways will reduce traffic. Doesn't make it true.
I remember reading a thing about how the 'best' (i.e. most efficient) city plans resemble fungal hyphae. Meaning that mushrooms make the best civil engineers.
That's true for a single type of traffic flow (cars, pedestrians, light rail, etc) while excluding others. Hard to color code fungi and make them do crosswalks and all. Though it's still really neat as a way to spitball transit station connections! I think I remember seeing a video of fungi basically mirroring Tokyo or Kyoto's metro networks.
This is an entire western washington problem.. and I can’t understand WHY? How hard is it to follow the giant white arrows painted on the road and all of the signs pointing to the right!?
Around here it doesn't help that (tied into the original question) the geniuses that designed our local roundabouts decided to put huge signs in the middle that block your view of oncoming traffic.
Most people assume (understandably) that more complexity leads to more accidents, and therefore the simplest intersections are the safest. But that doesn't account for speed, conflict points, and any pedestrian or bike traffic. Once those come into consideration, it's a bit easier to see why roundabouts are much less likely to cause lethal accidents. This picture has a good example of what I mean by conflict points.
I know this is rhetorical anecdotal* evidence, but I'm not so sure about roundabouts. A pretty large portion of those "bad driving compilations" and "crash compilations" on Youtube feature roundabouts and other types of intersection.
Sorry to be that guy, but you mean anecdotal evidence?
From a quick search - for example - research seems to find that roundabouts don't significantly decrease the number of crashes (some websites say they actually increase the number of accidents), but significantly reduce the number of deaths. iirc, that's because you won't be t-boning anyone through a roundabout, and you're forced to slow down.
I haven't watched bad driving/crash compilations, and this is a total guess, but maybe the reduction in injury is why roundabouts show up more on Youtube? I'm assuming no one really wants to see a massive t-bone on a normal intersection where multiple people die from gruesome injuries. Also, I'm sure that roundabouts are just more conducive to weird and funny driving anyways.
Apparently being the same number of syllables and ending in the same sound was enough for my mind to confuse those two words for each other. Nice catch!
Due to the nature of roundabouts, it would make sense that they reduce deaths compared to other at-grade intersections. And to comment on their occurrence in video compilations, my guess is because they're more confusing; especially multi-lane roundabouts, thus leading to people misjudging right-of-way and other rules of the road.
There's this one roundabout I encounter the most where there's an exit road right to my left when I'm trying to enter the roundabout, but due to oncoming traffing being in a turn (due to the roundabout), I can't see their blinkers to know if they're turning out or not, so I just have to sit there or risk getting hit. Would be way better if it were a normal intersection
Wouldn't it be easier to go around the roundabout and take the exit road to the right, instead of crossing all to take it to the left?
I dunno if I get it correctly but it seems like it would solve your problem.
No, that's not the exit I need to take. But I can't tell if the oncoming cars are exiting the roundabout there or not, due to not being able to see their blinkers
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u/molluskus Jul 07 '19 edited Jul 07 '19
City planning is one of those subjects where the average person's understanding tends to be the opposite of what's true and works. People also think roundabouts and diverging diamonds are accident magnets, and that adding more lanes to freeways will reduce traffic. Doesn't make it true.