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A roundabout is a much better solution than a stop sign. I still believe that the ubiquous stop signs in the US are there due to the oil lobby. Bringing a car t

A roundabout is a much better solution than a stop sign. I still believe that the ubiquous stop signs in the US are there due to the oil lobby. Bringing a car to a full stop is incredibly wasteful.

lostlogin 9y ago
It might be wasteful, but so is killing people. Stop signs and some speed bumps would soon slow them.
- ajmurmann 9y ago
  True, but as I pointed out, so would a roundabout. In the area where I grew up we also had a dangerous piece of road that got "fixed" by setting up a "dangerous curve" sign with a warning light on top. It went from multiple fatalities every year to zero.
nostrademons 9y ago
Roundabouts and 4-way stops are used in different situations - a 4-way stop is typically used in residential neighborhoods or street grids where the roads are only single-lane and the lack of available space prohibits a roundabout.
- ajmurmann 9y ago
  In Europe the residential area would either 1. Have no signs resulting in the car to the right getting the right of way 2. One road gets a right of way sign and the other road had to yield. I strongly prefer those setups because they are much more fuel efficient. However, I don't think any of that would work in the UD because it would require real driving classes and tests. I had to drive around for close to 20 hours with a professional driving teacher on to of dozens of hours of theoretical classes. All that end in a 30min+ examination with a examiner in the back of the car putting me through as many challenging situations as possible.
  - nostrademons 9y ago
    In the urban eastern U.S. apartment buildings usually run right up to the road, except a ~ 1-3meter sidewalk. There isn't sufficient visibility to yield safely; both directions have to come to a stop anyway to check for cross traffic. In the western U.S. (and eastern suburbs) the 4-way stops are largely vestigial; I'd agree that most of them could go away without any loss of safety. Many of the newer neighborhoods are signed that way anyway, though - I just drove through one this morning with 2-way yields. My driver's ed class was IIRC 36 hours of instruction and 12 hours in the car, with a professional driving teacher. It had an hour long examination putting me through as many challenging situations as possible at the end.
    - Scarblac 9y ago
      It's also a matter of being used to bicycle traffic, and training. In the Netherlands in a residential area there are probably more bicycles than cars, so every car driver is used to being careful at junctions. And on average a person needs 38 hours in the car with a professional teacher before they pass the exam, most people don't pass on the first try.
  - tc313 9y ago
    Most middle- and upper-class Americans take a driver’s education course (like what you’ve described) prior to receiving their driver’s license. In 10 years it won’t even be necessary because nobody’s going to be driving themselves anyway.
    - adrianN 9y ago
      A lot of the cars on the road right now are ten years old or older. Even if self driving cars became a thing that anybody can afford right now it would take longer than ten years before nobody had to drive themselves.
      - ptaipale 9y ago
        In my country (Finland), the average age of cars used in traffic is 13 years.
- ygra 9y ago
  There are plenty junctions that have been turned into a roundabout simply by painting a circle in the middle and putting up the necessary signs. They don't need that much space, especially in places that are low speed, low traffic volume like residential neighbourhoods.
marcus_holmes 9y ago
For cyclists, roundabouts aren't that much better unless we're given separate lanes. Motorists still tend to blow through roundabouts at speed if they can't see anything coming. From personal experience you can easily navigate a roundabout at 35+ mph.
- kbart 9y ago
  "From personal experience you can easily navigate a roundabout at 35+ mph." If a roundabout is small enough, you can't. I have seen many small roundabouts throughout Europe that you cannot navigate without swerving faster than 20-30 km/h (which is assumed safe speed for pedestrian).
  - thirdsun 9y ago
    Plus, at least in my region there always seems to be some sort of obstacle blocking sight in the center of larger roundabouts. Maybe it's just a convenient place for memorials, statues, etc., but I can't help but think that slowing down drivers is at least a welcome side effect.
    - pxndx 9y ago
      The obstacles are intentional. Blocking sight forces people to slow down.
- imbur 9y ago
  Look at what they have in Berkeley. It addresses exactly this situation
- paulie_a 9y ago
  I've been curious as to why American roundabouts include unnecessary vegetation or a hill in the middle? Why obscure oncoming traffic?
  - kgwgk 9y ago
    The obstruction in the middle also makes the existence of a roundabout more obvious.
larkeith 9y ago
Having lived near a very similar intersection, also with frequent accidents (it has a 2-way stop with heavy 50-70 mph cross-traffic and frequent left turns, depending on the time of day), cost may be a significant portion of the reason; a neighborhood campaign to replace the 2-way stop with a traffic light fell through due to a >$1 million price tag for adding a light to a countryside road, and it's doubtful a roundabout would cost less.
- njarboe 9y ago
  A roundabout might cost less. I wonder how much of that signal price was getting grid electricity to the site.
  - larkeith 9y ago
    Interestingly, there is a flashing red/yellow light there (similar to [1]) and plenty of houses/powerlines, so it shouldn't be the power costs. I imagine the price of buying and laying signal cable might be similarly expensive, however, as the nearest signaled intersection is about two miles away, if I recall correctly. [1] https://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/intersection/other_topics/fhwasa06016/images/fig21.jpg https://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/intersection/other_topics/fhwasa...
- Piskvorrr 9y ago
  Anecdata: fixing frequent accident sites (e.g. 70 kph main road x 50 kph access roads) with traffic lights reduces minor accidents, but there was a major accident on one of them just recently...because "traffic lights be damned, nobody ever comes out that road anyw-BOOM." Traffic lights are a discretionary access control mechanism ("ignore at your discretion"), roundabout is a mandatory access control mechanism.
  - ajmurmann 9y ago
    I wonder if that happened because the traffic light was just on a timer rather than taking actual traffic in account. If the smaller road hardly ever sees traffic the light would be red very infrequently and getting your attention when red.
porjo 9y ago
I agree. A roundabout is also a much better than solution presented in the article, whereby traffic would have to turn across oncoming traffic in order to continue on their original track.
wizzard 9y ago
I have roundabouts in my neighborhood. They have the exact same problem. If you don't come to a full stop and/or look around your A pillar deliberately, you may never see the car or bike hidden behind it. I've also had the same problem turning onto a crossroad without coming to a complete stop at the stop sign first. I believe the only real solution is driver training.
- alkonaut 9y ago
  Training is important, but the idea behind roundabouts is "we'll have plenty of collisions here, but all of them will be 30km/h or less". Obviously you want to having bicycles or pedestrians in your roundabout so adding a bike/pedestrian path next to the roads has to be part of the plan if you want to do it right.
- usrusr 9y ago
  But you modulate speed and rotate the car while navigating the roundabout, which solves the constant speed/constant bearing problem. At a roundabout, blind spots are all over the place and will never perfectly track another traffic participant.
bambax 9y ago
A roundabout is always the best solution, but it's very expensive. Replacing the "Give Way" by a stop sign costs almost nothing and would probably help a lot, although not for truly reckless drivers.
- usrusr 9y ago
  Traffic lights chop up traffic flow, creating windows of opportunity for turns and crossings at minor intersections downstream. Roundabouts on the other hand create bottlenecks of relatively constant throughput, smoothing out any pulsation in traffic density (e.g. from upstream traffic lights), which makes minor downstream intersections much more difficult. Determining the best option for a given case is more an at than a matter of simple preferences.

A roundabout is a much better solution than a stop sign. I still believe that the ubiquous stop signs in the US are there due to the oil lobby. Bringing a car to a full stop is incredibly wasteful.

lostlogin 9y ago

It might be wasteful, but so is killing people. Stop signs and some speed bumps would soon slow them.

ajmurmann 9y ago
True, but as I pointed out, so would a roundabout. In the area where I grew up we also had a dangerous piece of road that got "fixed" by setting up a "dangerous curve" sign with a warning light on top. It went from multiple fatalities every year to zero.

nostrademons 9y ago

Roundabouts and 4-way stops are used in different situations - a 4-way stop is typically used in residential neighborhoods or street grids where the roads are only single-lane and the lack of available space prohibits a roundabout.

ajmurmann 9y ago
In Europe the residential area would either 1. Have no signs resulting in the car to the right getting the right of way 2. One road gets a right of way sign and the other road had to yield. I strongly prefer those setups because they are much more fuel efficient. However, I don't think any of that would work in the UD because it would require real driving classes and tests. I had to drive around for close to 20 hours with a professional driving teacher on to of dozens of hours of theoretical classes. All that end in a 30min+ examination with a examiner in the back of the car putting me through as many challenging situations as possible.
- nostrademons 9y ago
  In the urban eastern U.S. apartment buildings usually run right up to the road, except a ~ 1-3meter sidewalk. There isn't sufficient visibility to yield safely; both directions have to come to a stop anyway to check for cross traffic. In the western U.S. (and eastern suburbs) the 4-way stops are largely vestigial; I'd agree that most of them could go away without any loss of safety. Many of the newer neighborhoods are signed that way anyway, though - I just drove through one this morning with 2-way yields. My driver's ed class was IIRC 36 hours of instruction and 12 hours in the car, with a professional driving teacher. It had an hour long examination putting me through as many challenging situations as possible at the end.
  - Scarblac 9y ago
    It's also a matter of being used to bicycle traffic, and training. In the Netherlands in a residential area there are probably more bicycles than cars, so every car driver is used to being careful at junctions. And on average a person needs 38 hours in the car with a professional teacher before they pass the exam, most people don't pass on the first try.
- tc313 9y ago
  Most middle- and upper-class Americans take a driver’s education course (like what you’ve described) prior to receiving their driver’s license. In 10 years it won’t even be necessary because nobody’s going to be driving themselves anyway.
  - adrianN 9y ago
    A lot of the cars on the road right now are ten years old or older. Even if self driving cars became a thing that anybody can afford right now it would take longer than ten years before nobody had to drive themselves.
    - ptaipale 9y ago
      In my country (Finland), the average age of cars used in traffic is 13 years.
ygra 9y ago
There are plenty junctions that have been turned into a roundabout simply by painting a circle in the middle and putting up the necessary signs. They don't need that much space, especially in places that are low speed, low traffic volume like residential neighbourhoods.

marcus_holmes 9y ago

For cyclists, roundabouts aren't that much better unless we're given separate lanes. Motorists still tend to blow through roundabouts at speed if they can't see anything coming. From personal experience you can easily navigate a roundabout at 35+ mph.

kbart 9y ago
"From personal experience you can easily navigate a roundabout at 35+ mph." If a roundabout is small enough, you can't. I have seen many small roundabouts throughout Europe that you cannot navigate without swerving faster than 20-30 km/h (which is assumed safe speed for pedestrian).
- thirdsun 9y ago
  Plus, at least in my region there always seems to be some sort of obstacle blocking sight in the center of larger roundabouts. Maybe it's just a convenient place for memorials, statues, etc., but I can't help but think that slowing down drivers is at least a welcome side effect.
  - pxndx 9y ago
    The obstacles are intentional. Blocking sight forces people to slow down.
imbur 9y ago
Look at what they have in Berkeley. It addresses exactly this situation
paulie_a 9y ago
I've been curious as to why American roundabouts include unnecessary vegetation or a hill in the middle? Why obscure oncoming traffic?
- kgwgk 9y ago
  The obstruction in the middle also makes the existence of a roundabout more obvious.

larkeith 9y ago

Having lived near a very similar intersection, also with frequent accidents (it has a 2-way stop with heavy 50-70 mph cross-traffic and frequent left turns, depending on the time of day), cost may be a significant portion of the reason; a neighborhood campaign to replace the 2-way stop with a traffic light fell through due to a >$1 million price tag for adding a light to a countryside road, and it's doubtful a roundabout would cost less.

njarboe 9y ago
A roundabout might cost less. I wonder how much of that signal price was getting grid electricity to the site.
- larkeith 9y ago
  Interestingly, there is a flashing red/yellow light there (similar to [1]) and plenty of houses/powerlines, so it shouldn't be the power costs. I imagine the price of buying and laying signal cable might be similarly expensive, however, as the nearest signaled intersection is about two miles away, if I recall correctly. [1] https://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/intersection/other_topics/fhwasa06016/images/fig21.jpg https://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/intersection/other_topics/fhwasa...
Piskvorrr 9y ago
Anecdata: fixing frequent accident sites (e.g. 70 kph main road x 50 kph access roads) with traffic lights reduces minor accidents, but there was a major accident on one of them just recently...because "traffic lights be damned, nobody ever comes out that road anyw-BOOM." Traffic lights are a discretionary access control mechanism ("ignore at your discretion"), roundabout is a mandatory access control mechanism.
- ajmurmann 9y ago
  I wonder if that happened because the traffic light was just on a timer rather than taking actual traffic in account. If the smaller road hardly ever sees traffic the light would be red very infrequently and getting your attention when red.

porjo 9y ago

I agree. A roundabout is also a much better than solution presented in the article, whereby traffic would have to turn across oncoming traffic in order to continue on their original track.

wizzard 9y ago

I have roundabouts in my neighborhood. They have the exact same problem. If you don't come to a full stop and/or look around your A pillar deliberately, you may never see the car or bike hidden behind it. I've also had the same problem turning onto a crossroad without coming to a complete stop at the stop sign first. I believe the only real solution is driver training.

alkonaut 9y ago
Training is important, but the idea behind roundabouts is "we'll have plenty of collisions here, but all of them will be 30km/h or less". Obviously you want to having bicycles or pedestrians in your roundabout so adding a bike/pedestrian path next to the roads has to be part of the plan if you want to do it right.
usrusr 9y ago
But you modulate speed and rotate the car while navigating the roundabout, which solves the constant speed/constant bearing problem. At a roundabout, blind spots are all over the place and will never perfectly track another traffic participant.

bambax 9y ago

A roundabout is always the best solution, but it's very expensive. Replacing the "Give Way" by a stop sign costs almost nothing and would probably help a lot, although not for truly reckless drivers.

usrusr 9y ago
Traffic lights chop up traffic flow, creating windows of opportunity for turns and crossings at minor intersections downstream. Roundabouts on the other hand create bottlenecks of relatively constant throughput, smoothing out any pulsation in traffic density (e.g. from upstream traffic lights), which makes minor downstream intersections much more difficult. Determining the best option for a given case is more an at than a matter of simple preferences.