3 ms·

Long time Carmel, IN resident here, AMA. Yes, almost every intersection has a roundabout for a population around 100k. Yes, they are efficient. Yes, it’s a pain

Long time Carmel, IN resident here, AMA. Yes, almost every intersection has a roundabout for a population around 100k. Yes, they are efficient. Yes, it’s a pain using them when people who don’t know how to use them, use them.

ToucanLoucan 3y ago
Checking in from WI here. We started getting a lot of them in the greater Green Bay area about a decade ago. It's better-ish lately, but there are still consistently issues with drivers who don't understand how they work, and there are frankly too many of them located around light-industrial areas. I have no idea how these get approved for those locations: for commuter cars, they're excellent. For LTL trucks, they are highly problematic, cause traffic backups, and due to the nature of those large vehicles, basically the only way they can proceed through them is to wait until there is no traffic at all in any direction, or simply pull forward and hope the driver in the roundabout can/will stop in time to avoid an accident. It's also worth noting: this are notably more difficult to traverse during fresh snows. While starting and stopping is certainly an issue in snowy intersections, a roundabout introduces a lot of turning, and especially so in cases of spiral ones. Two-lane roundabouts basically have to become one lane during a heavy snow, there just isn't enough grip to safely maneuver one with multiple lanes. And that's with Wisconsin lanes, which are notably large among US states.
city41 3y ago
> Yes, it’s a pain using them when people who don’t know how to use them, use them. Here in Michigan there are roundabouts everywhere. And I'd estimate oh maybe 20% of the drivers know how to use them. Because of that, I absolutely hate them. A roundabout around here is just a total luck of the draw on what you will get: people treating it like a four way stop, people ignoring it completely and just blasting straight through at top speed, people going into the roundabout then stopping at every merge point, people going into the roundabout and stopping to let someone else merge in front of them, on and on. I'm still amazed at what people do. I suspect the people who blast through it at top speed and cause an accident cause other people to turn into the type that treat roundabouts with extreme caution. Just outside my neighborhood I must have seen 10 accidents in the past two years alone. That's a lot of accidents at an otherwise low traffic intersection.

ToucanLoucan 3y ago

Checking in from WI here. We started getting a lot of them in the greater Green Bay area about a decade ago. It's better-ish lately, but there are still consistently issues with drivers who don't understand how they work, and there are frankly too many of them located around light-industrial areas. I have no idea how these get approved for those locations: for commuter cars, they're excellent. For LTL trucks, they are highly problematic, cause traffic backups, and due to the nature of those large vehicles, basically the only way they can proceed through them is to wait until there is no traffic at all in any direction, or simply pull forward and hope the driver in the roundabout can/will stop in time to avoid an accident. It's also worth noting: this are notably more difficult to traverse during fresh snows. While starting and stopping is certainly an issue in snowy intersections, a roundabout introduces a lot of turning, and especially so in cases of spiral ones. Two-lane roundabouts basically have to become one lane during a heavy snow, there just isn't enough grip to safely maneuver one with multiple lanes. And that's with Wisconsin lanes, which are notably large among US states.

city41 3y ago

> Yes, it’s a pain using them when people who don’t know how to use them, use them. Here in Michigan there are roundabouts everywhere. And I'd estimate oh maybe 20% of the drivers know how to use them. Because of that, I absolutely hate them. A roundabout around here is just a total luck of the draw on what you will get: people treating it like a four way stop, people ignoring it completely and just blasting straight through at top speed, people going into the roundabout then stopping at every merge point, people going into the roundabout and stopping to let someone else merge in front of them, on and on. I'm still amazed at what people do. I suspect the people who blast through it at top speed and cause an accident cause other people to turn into the type that treat roundabouts with extreme caution. Just outside my neighborhood I must have seen 10 accidents in the past two years alone. That's a lot of accidents at an otherwise low traffic intersection.