A roundabout nightmare turning in all right circles
- col-teri-stein
- June 5, 2024
- 861
Recently, my husband Joe and I took a fun overnight trip out of town to one of our favorite spots on the North Coast of Ohio, and we made a horrifying discovery.
It was not one but two roundabouts — one intersection after another.
If you haven’t had the “pleasure” of using a roundabout yet, here is how they work. In a roundabout everyone is just making right turns. Everybody yields, and then after entering the roundabout, you keep going around the circle until you get to the road you need to take. Even if a simple left turn would have done the trick, you can’t do it on a roundabout.
A little history about traffic signals. The first traffic signal was installed in horse and buggy days in London in 1868. Many people invented different designs or improved upon traffic signals throughout the years.
Then in 1923 Garrett Morgan, the first African American to own a car in Cleveland, patented an electric automatic traffic signal. His design could be inexpensively produced, meaning more traffic signals could be installed. According to online research, Morgan sold the rights to the device for $40,000 to General Electric. A smart guy, Morgan also invented the gas mask.
You have to admit the traffic signal is a simple but genius idea. There is a minimal number of decisions you have to make at a stop light. You stop on red, and then you see green and you go.
Things can get stressful with a roundabout. There are too many decisions. There are at least four points of entry, and you need to watch every one. Is there a driver already in the roundabout? Are you going to hit them if you enter the roundabout? How fast is another driver going to enter the roundabout? Are you going to hit them if you try to enter the roundabout? Where is your exit? All the exits look the same, veering off to the right. At least you can take another lap around if you need to.
You long for the simplicity of a traffic light when you could just sit there and wait for the light to change.
I think one of the reasons I hate roundabouts so much is because Joe and I took a wrong turn one time on our way back from Niagara Falls, Canada and ended up in, I think — it’s been a long time ago — Niagara Square in Buffalo, New York. Says it’s a square but this one-way circle gives access to seven streets.
We were in a pickup truck, hauling a big, clunky truck camper, and no one would let us over into the lane we needed to be in to leave. We drove around the circle about five times before we got out. I thought we might just be driving in that circle for the rest of our lives.
Why are we innocent people sentenced to a lifetime of more and more roundabouts?
It’s safety. Roundabouts are supposed to be safer. This is probably because you can only go around one at about 10 mph, although the posted speed limit is 20 mph.
Apparently, roundabouts reduce crashes that cause injury and death by making it less likely to have a certain type of collision like left turn or head-on ones. They claim to improve traffic flow and are reportedly safer for pedestrians to cross.
I am all for safety, so I am probably going to have to get over my roundabout anxiety and go with the flow, in all right-turning circles.
But really, it’s our own fault we are going to be stuck with all these roundabouts. Humans are the top species on Earth, and we couldn’t handle intersections and make the easiest device ever — a stoplight — work for us. Such a simple idea and humans can’t make it work. I’m disappointed, and it won’t make approaching that next roundabout any easier.