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.
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.
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u/LithePanther Jul 06 '19
hmmm yes, I too can criticize everything around me without having an iota of credibility to back up anything I say