Roundabouts: The Problem Is You

They’re as American as Washington, DC yet most people in the US are terrified of them, hate them or both. What is it about traffic circles and roundabouts - which do nothing but safely, inexpensively and greenly direct traffic – that America can’t stand?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to stuff you should know from how Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles w Chuck Bryant, and there's nobody else.
Because this is just pitiful man ghost producers left and right.

(00:26):
It doesn't bump you out to be I'm just gonna
come out and admit it, yes, a little bit. It
just it just makes the whole thing feel so workman
like and unimportant. You know. Yeah, with just you and
me in here, it's uh, I mean, I'm happy to
be here with you, but you know, like like, um, yeah,

(00:46):
you know, it's just just another thing that has to
be done. Record Josh and Chuck. It's not an event anymore.
You know. There's no streamers like there used to be.
Nobody cares well. Luckily the people who are listening care, yes,
and you really have to care. If you listened to
an episode about roundabouts, you know, it's funny that you

(01:07):
picked this one because just two days ago, it's driving home,
I went through a roundabout in uh, the neighborhood of
Lake Claire, Okay, and I was like, I love roundabouts.
I love roundabouts. I wish Atlanta had more in Atlanta

(01:28):
has its a decent amount. Now, a lot of them newer.
But I was just thinking about how much I loved roundabouts,
and the next day you said, let's do one on roundabouts.
That's really interesting, man, Yeah, that is I like that
kind of um uh not syncretism. That's where Catholicism and

(01:48):
indigenous religious beliefs merge. I can't remember what it's called,
but um synchronicity, that's what it is. I like that
kind of stuff. So I'm right there with you, man.
I love round about two. And here's why. To me.
The second worst thing in the world after slow driving
people in the fast lane, which, by the way, you

(02:10):
can see my Twitter feed Josh underscore um underscore Clark
for how I feel about um slow drivers in the
fast lane. I haven't. I have a feeling. I know
what you're about to say, but go ahead. The second,
the second worst thing that could possibly happen to a
human being is to sit there at a red light
when there's no traffic coming. Okay, that's not what I

(02:32):
thought you were gonna say. What did you think I
was gonna say? I thought you were gonna say people
who do not know how to manage a four way
stop sign. Stop. Uh, that the third, I'll put that third. Yeah,
you're right, I'll put that third. Man. Yeah. It is
annoying sitting at a traffic light, and it's even more
annoying these days when you sit for an extra three

(02:53):
seconds at every stop light because everyone is just finishing
up that email. Oh man, Yeah, that drives me crazy.
I do. I'm so quick on the horn now. I
used to be very polite and just like a little hey,
you might not notice tap tap, But now when I
see that head down, I just lay it on thick.
I cannot tell you how proud I am of you

(03:14):
right now. It's really like, I love it, and I
usually screen some expletive attached to you. Get off your phone, Chuck,
you are really coming along, buddy, appreciated. Remember. I remember
one time when we were driving together years and years ago,
and I was doing I was like shouting at people
and stuff, and You're like, really, we're doing this, and

(03:35):
I was like, yeah, it's in this normal. And then
now to hear that you're you're doing the same thing,
I'm I'm glad. I'm actually dialing it back. Apparently, it's
just kind of transferred over and made its way to you. Yeah,
I guess it's one of those things. Like um. Anger
in a car can neither be created nor destroyed. It
just goes from person to person. I just got no
patience for cell phones and driving none. Agree, I'm over it. Well,

(03:59):
that's another great thing. It's a it's a great thing,
slash dangerous thing about introducing roundabouts. The idea that people
are on their phones now more than ever while they're driving. Um.
Which again, if you're doing that, just just just stop,
just stop. That's so dangerous, it's so reckless and irresponsible.

(04:19):
Stop doing that. Okay. The problem is is if you
if you have people on phones and you introduce roundabouts,
it's good and it's bad. It's a double edged sword.
It's good because if they have even a shred of
survival instinct, they'll just drop their phone right to the
floorboard and grab the wheel with both hands and terror
and panic because suddenly something is different and they have

(04:41):
to really pay attention. That's one of the great things
about a roundabout. It makes you pay attention. Right. The
problem ideally, if you don't have that survival instinct and
you don't drop your phone, then all of a sudden,
conditions suddenly change and you might find yourself in an
accident with somebody else. Fortune, at least roundabouts their designs

(05:01):
so that the accident will be minimal compared to one
that you may have gotten into at a lighted intersection,
for sure. However, there is a newer roundabout over an
Emery Village. I don't know if you've seen that one yet,
And that Emory Villages is tough because it was a
needed one because it's I don't know how many points.

(05:24):
I feel like it's a like one of those kind
of weird five way intersections. So those kinds of intersections
are screaming for roundabouts, so they finally built one. It's
very pretty, very functional. But just yesterday I was driving
through that one, thinking I love roundabouts, and this dude
just barreled through and did not yield, almost hit me. Uh,

(05:45):
And I had a few choice words for him. But
I'm like, roundabouts to me are so intuitive. Our article
says are counterintuitive. I disagree. I did too. I think
there's nothing more intuitive than not to just go barreling
into a worldly go round circle of cars, which this
guy did, right, But what's What's ironic is if if

(06:06):
he had done that, and say like the nineteen fifties
in the United States, he would have been in the right,
you would have been in the wrong, which is just
crazy to me when I did that. Do you want
to do you want to start with some history about roundabouts, because,
believe it or not, everybody they have some history. Yeah,
I mean, should we quickly say what they are? We're

(06:27):
doing that thing again? You're right? So a roundabout is
um frequently called a traffic circle over in the UK,
and I think in other parts of Europe they call
it a gyratory, a one way gyratory um and sometimes
previously they were called rotaries. But what it is is

(06:47):
it is a instead of an intersection where say two
or more roads cross, rather than just having it be
all right angles, you take that intersection and kind of
break it out and put a circle in the middle.
And now all of a sudden, everybody going through that
intersection has to go around the circle. Whether you want
to go right, straight, left, or do you turn, you've

(07:09):
got a circle to to circumnavigate. And there's a lot
of reasons to do this. It slows people down, it
makes them pay attention, ideally, UM, it cuts down on
congestion and UM, I think it's just much safer than
a lighted intersection. So that's that's what a roundabout is
a round about specifically. Also, Chuck, it's a UM it's

(07:33):
a specific kind of This traffic implementation has has specific
traits that we'll talk about that make it unique among
traffic flow management things involving circles, which I think is
the technical term. Yeah, like if you don't have them
in your town, which is possible. We'll get to some

(07:55):
USA stats at some point, but you can think of
as a tiny little circular expressway with different exits yea,
all along the way. So as you approach one, if
you want to go straight, if you want to just
keep going straight, you have to enter the roundabout and
go halfway around and then take your little exit to
continue straight. If you want to take a left, then

(08:18):
you have to drive all the way around the circle
and then get off taking a right. If that makes sense. Yeah,
this article says it's a two hundred and seventy degree turn.
Yeah that that that that tracks. I think I won't
contest that. Uh, all right, so I think we can
do history now. Man, that was a really great description

(08:39):
of a roundabout man, which with the tiny uh circular expressway. Yeah, Like,
we have the perimeter here in Atlanta, like a lot
of city sub perimeters around the city, and this is
just like a tiny little perimeter. Yeah. Yeah, I guess
that's a really good way to put it. Thanks. So. Um,
if we're going back to the beginning of roundabouts, most

(09:02):
people would expect to find them in Europe, because everybody's
seen National Lampoon's European Vacation with the very famous roundabout scene. Right. Um. Actually,
the first contours of what would become roundabouts are found
in Washington, d C. In Europe's defense, they were designed

(09:23):
by a European, Pierre Loenfont, who designed Washington d C.
He actually worked in some traffic circles, which is weird
because there was no such thing as cars at the
end of the eighteenth century, so it's very odd that
he worked traffic circles in But by god, he worked
in traffic circles. There were horses and buggies. Imagine there

(09:43):
was I wonder if there was horse and buggy traffic, surely, right,
I don't know. I'm not sure why he created these circles.
If it wasn't for traffic flow, or if it wasn't
just for aesthetics, It's possible it was for aesthetics to
although it was probably some weirdo Mason thing that has
to do with taking over the world in five centuries

(10:06):
from now or something. I just think it's funny. I
never really thought about uh in a big city like Washington,
d C. In the eight hundreds, sitting in a long
line of horse and buggy traffic, like, oh, for God's sakes,
this guy, this guy in front of me, he's sitting
there writing a writing a letter with a with a

(10:26):
fountain band right settle the used to settle the get
off your paper, Get off your paper. They'd have a quill,
is what it is? Yeah, what I say, fountain pin?
Yeah No, you said ballpoint. I think I'm pretty sure
you said baldpoint. We'll rewind and find out one day.
So du Pont Circle the very famous and beautiful and

(10:48):
I really like that area of d C. DuPont Circle
is was, I believe, kind of the first big one
in the United States, right, yes, And so people say, okay,
all right, whatever year lam Font designed one in Washington,
d C. And that's that's that's it. That that became
the first one later on, But that doesn't really count

(11:08):
because he wasn't really anticipating cars. So surely the first
one really is in Europe, right it? Actually, no, that's
not correct either. No, in nineteen o five Brian Eno,
Oh wait, not Brian Eno, his brother Bill, Yeah, Bill
william Eno. Uh, in nineteen o five constructed He was

(11:29):
a businessman, and I don't think he constructed it, but
he designed at least and implemented the very famous Columbus
Circle in New York City, which everyone, as far as
automy automobiles go, consider the first traffic circle in the
United States. Yes, so definitively the first traffic circle, the
first circular means of directing traffic around a circle circularly

(11:55):
four cars, right, it finds it's its place in history
in nine you know, five in New York City. And
then the first one came in in the UK at least,
if not Europe, four years later. Um, the British one
way gyratory uh in Letchworth Garden City. That's adorable, Letchworth

(12:15):
Garden City. Doesn't it make you feel like everybody dresses
like undertakers there and they have like you know, like
claw fingers or something. Letchworth welcomed with. Yeah. So uh okay,
So finally Europe gets on board with the traffic circle
in the early twentieth century. Yeah. We should point out

(12:36):
though that with those earlier roundabouts, uh, they were not
like we see today. They didn't have this gradual sort
of flow emotion. It was sort of a circle with
the sharp right angles where you enter an exit, which
is is not flowy an intuitive, No, it's not. And

(12:57):
there's this other thing too, so um if around about,
so you can kind of interchange roundabout and traffic circle
and then something else called rotary. It's all a circle
where traffic is meant to go basically one way around it,
and there's exits that are actually streets that form up

(13:18):
the intersection. Right, All of those things have that element,
those elements in common where what the differences between like
rotaries and traffic circles and roundabouts is the rules. Right,
So when they when traffic really started and people started
building these, especially in America and the in Europe, um,
like in the twenties, thirties, forties, when they really started

(13:40):
to begin to take off, the rules were different, and
they had it dead wrong. And it was a really simple,
a really simple traffic rule that they had going on
that was screwing everything up. And what it was was
that if you were in the traffic circle, if somebody
was eating to get in the traffics circle, you yielded

(14:03):
to the person coming into the circle. It's just so backwards,
literally backwards, totally backwards. They basically had a fifty fifty
chance of coming up with the right rule, and they
chose the wrong way. And for decades people got nightmare
headaches from traffic circles, which back then were called rotaries. Yeah,

(14:24):
they had congestion, they had a lot of accidents. And
this was in the like nineteen thirties through the mid
nineteen fifties. For close to thirty years, they were just like, well,
we just can't figure out what's wrong here. There's just
something wrong and I can't put my finger. It's crazy. Finally,
in England in nineteen sixty six they went, why don't

(14:46):
we just reverse that and reverse the yield. That's literally
all they had to do was you as you approach
a traffic circle, you are yielding. Once you're in the
traffic circle. You're fine, and that chain everything changed everything
all of a sudden, like they had they used to
have to call in cops to undo the gridlock that

(15:07):
would form in these traffic circles because of this um
and they changed this this flow of traffic pattern. The
old one was called we've theory, where the people in
the circle would stop and the people coming in would
would weave into whatever lane they wanted to. It was
just madness. And then they went to gap theory, which
is you basically get in where you fit in when

(15:28):
you're coming into the circle, and everybody else in the
circles like, just get out of my way. I'm in
the circle. I've got the right of way. And like
you said, it changed everything, and all of a sudden,
these um like delays and congestion dropped by like half overnight. Yeah,
capacity increased by crashes and delays decreased by and everyone went, wow,

(15:52):
I can't believe it took us thirty years to think
of this. Yes, and it took off big time in
Britain after that. But because of the hullabaloo in the
United States previously, there was a long time where the
US was like another you know, twenty plus years where
the US was still like, na, I'm not I'm not

(16:13):
falling for this traffic circle thing again. Yeah, because I
mean they had built rotaries all over the place in
the United States, but they they worked so poorly because
of that one stupid rule that by the time America
gave up on it and the time Britain picked up
on that rule change, America had said like we're done

(16:33):
with these. They they were actually tearing out their old
rotaries and putting in um new for you know, for uh,
like a traffic lighted intersection. Like we marched down with
their pitchforks and their torches and stop signs, and they
and jackhammers destroyed these traffic circles and smash stop signs

(16:57):
through human bodies into the ground. It took I think
and OHI, California lovely, OHI. Uh, that was a proposal
for just a little three legged roundabout, and everyone in
OHI is pretty laid back area. They were like no,
and so they didn't do it. And then two years later,
finally in Summerland, Nevada, everybody, I'm sorry Nevada, everybody got

(17:22):
on board. And I think they had a couple of
them in a planned community there. Well, that's why I
think it went through is because the community was being
built from the ground up, so there was nobody to
say no. So they were just they moved in and
they were there. So so that was nine when America
got its first actual roundabout. And again it's because of

(17:44):
that one stupid rule that had just plagued everybody and
driven them crazy starting in the thirties up to about
the fifties. And I saw one other reason why America
didn't have roundabouts tu chuck um after World War Two,
when Eisenhower was over there, Um he saw a lot
of gridlock in Paris, especially around the Plasta Plasta till Gyratory,

(18:10):
the one that's around the Lark de Triomph, you know,
which is huge. It's like a twelve lane traffic circle.
And he saw it was gridlocked all the time. But
then he saw in Germany how fast the Auto bonn
had gotten the Nazis around. So America got interstates instead
of traffic circles. Because Eisenhower was basically the architect of
America's interstate system. Oh wow, that was the other reason.

(18:35):
I saw another thing. I was reading an article in
UH I think I can't remember where it was, but
it was basically like why it might have been priceonomics,
why America has been so reticent and there is another theory,
uh that this one and this was a bit I
don't know. They call it controversial. It's really not that
big of a deal, but they say the roundabout is
said to have flourished in Britain because it requires the

(18:57):
British virtues of compromising cooperation. And they said the US
is more aggressive and confrontational in culture and may explain
why the roundabout has not been more widely adopted. M yeah,
I mean it is a group cooperation moving through a roundabout,
for sure, Whereas with a traffic light, it's the traffic
light says stop, the traffic light says go, and all

(19:19):
you have to do is know whether you're allowed to,
whether you have the right away or not to punch
it right. And I actually saw there's a there's something
called the UK Roundabout Appreciation Society's the guy who runs
that says that traffic lights are fascist because they tell
you to stop or go it any given point in time,
whereas a roundabout is much more group cooperative and people

(19:42):
make their own decisions together as a collective. Yeah, that's
why it's weird that in o Hi they would there
was an outcry in the eighties. I guess they were
just so new that they didn't get it. I think
that's and I think that's ultimately why people don't like
roundabouts there. It's a new thing, and everybody was raised
with their traffic lights, and they know what they're doing
with traffic lights, and this is a big, new, scary thing,

(20:03):
and we're not in the mood to learn a new thing.
So get that plan out of here and give us
a stupid, dumb traffic light that we're gonna have to
sit at at one in the morning, even though there's
no one in sight, and lose our minds and then
you finally get sick of it inside to run the
light and out of nowhere there's a cop behind you. Yeah.
All right, let's take a break, okay, and we'll talk

(20:25):
more about roundabouts right after this. Okay, So we should

(20:49):
talk a little bit about how to design a round about.
If you have a neighborhood that you have under your control, Um,
maybe you're gonna want to put a roundabout in after
you listen to this episod. So so if so, there's
some some things, some design principles that you want to
fall off if you're the king of your neighborhood or
the dictator. Sure, why not? Apparently, according to our article,

(21:14):
there are five characteristics, one of which I wouldn't even
count as something you would need to. Uh, well, I'll
just say that the big dumb, dumb one that should
be assumed. I'm gonna see if I can pick it out. Okay,
all right, I bet you well. First you enter, the
entry is controlled by a yield sign. Okay, that's that's smart.

(21:37):
But there are no signs or anything else you have
to do while inside the circle. The circle use your
turn signal. Yeah, that's the one thing you're supposed to do.
But everything else is like thunder dome like no rules.
Actually that's not true. There's plenty of rules, plenty of rules.
The second one is vehicles inside the roadway always have

(21:58):
the right of way. That's a big one. Again, that's
gap theory. You get in where you fit in if
you're coming into the circle, because everybody else in the
circle already has the right of way. Did you make
up get in where you fit in? I mean, I've
heard it before. But as far as traffic circles go, yes,
because that's a that's a heck of a slogan. I
think it's I think that is probably what's going to

(22:20):
lead America to a deep and abiding love of roundabout
think so we love things that rhyme. Yeah, we're dumb culture. Third,
pedestrians can only cross the legs of the intersection. Uh,
and you can only do it behind the yield sign.
So does that make sense to people? Yeah? Like you,

(22:42):
you're not supposed to cross to the center island. I
have a little story about that. Actually, the very famous
Arc a Triumph in Paris, France, that's the one I
was talking about, the plus ta ta Okay, is that
what it's called. Yeah, that's the name of the traffic circle. Yeah.
When I've the very first time I went to a
pair of us when I was, oh, I don't know,
twenty two years old, my friend, uh Brett and I

(23:06):
were standing on the outside looking at the Arc de
Triomph and all of that traffic and how many lanes
is that? Did you say? Twelve? Okay, twelve? But there
are no lines, right, It's just twelve space for twelve cars.
Think about that, like we don't even have twelve lane
highways in the United States as big as our highways are. Yeah.

(23:27):
So we're standing there and we're looking across and we're
looking at the traffic. We're like, man, I don't know
about this. Uh. And then we see an elderly woman
standing under the arch and I was like, dude, if
she can get over there, we can get over there.
And we did the frogger dash across the street, made

(23:47):
it in one piece, and then realized that there's an
underground walkway. I have the exact same story. Really, yep, yep.
When I was there with my family, my sister and
I tried to we we've made it across, but then
we're like, how is this legal? Why, Like, couldn't Paris
have come up with a better way? Yeah, it's the

(24:08):
answer is yes, and they did. That's pretty funny. I
bet we're not alone as Americans. I'm thinking that happens
multiple times a day. All right. So the fourth one
is that parking is not allowed within the circular roadway.
I think this is I'm gonna go ahead and say
that I think this is the dumb one. Yeah, that

(24:29):
that's the one. Anyone ever just stopped and then like
and like, all right, I'm going to the store. Maybe
there's that There's one they put a round about in
Atlantox mall, you know that. I don't think I've seen
that one. Um it has backed up traffic four miles
like somehow, like the traffic backs up the Tennessee now

(24:52):
because no one knows what to do there. They do
stop in the middle. I don't think anybody's parked in
it to go into the mall, but if they had,
I would be all that surprised. Is it in the
parking lot? It's um, it's part of the road. It's
in the parking lot, but it's part of like the
you know the road. You know what I'm saying. It's
not like in there's not like a parking space on

(25:12):
it or any Yeah, to get to and from the mall.
On the mall property, there's a roundabout, natcha gotcha? Uh?
And people do stop though, like just as the guy
barreled in without yielding. I was also in a round
about the other day where a lady like jammed on
the brakes when she saw a car approaching to get

(25:33):
into the roundabout. And that MUCKs everything up to right,
that's the we've theory that screwed things up with rotaries.
You just you do not stop when you're in the roundabout.
And I think this is what really freaks people out
as you realize that once you pull into that circle,
you're expected to keep going like that's just the way
it is. You're not supposed to stop. Technically, you're not

(25:55):
supposed to change lanes, and you're just you're supposed to go, go, go.
And think that's probably what unsettles a lot of people
about the roundabout. That and the fact that it's unfamiliar
and new and it's not what they learned to drive
on starting at age sixteen, you know. Yeah, and if
you get freaked out, like if you're I mean, the
ones in Atlanta are all pretty small, neighborhood ones, just
single lanes and you're going super slow. But if you

(26:18):
get in a large one and you get freaked out
and you don't get how to get over or to
get in the off the exit, just keep circling. Calm down,
because you can keep driving in a circle, just like
European vacation, Big Bend Parliament. Just keep hugging the circle
until everybody leaves and then you can do what you
want until two in the morning and everyone's gone. And

(26:40):
then finally, the fifth characteristic is all traffic must pass
to the right of the central island in a counterclockwise direction. Yeah,
that's a big one, and and it's it depends on
where you are and what traffic circle it is. But
in the United States, traffic circles and roundabouts typically go
counter clockwise. Like you said, right, there are some out

(27:02):
there that that go clockwise. Depends on again, on where
you are. The point is is all traffic is going
in the same direction around the circle. I think there's
a couple out there that, of course are going to
um undermine what I said. It's always somebody who's going
to but um, traffic circles typically all flow in the

(27:23):
same direction. Yes, So what we're talking about is sort
of the standard. There are many different kinds will go
over here in a sec but the standard one is
just a circle around the central island. Most of the times,
there's something lovely in that island, right, a planting or
a statue or something, which is another reason why people
like roundabouts more. Yep, stop signs never planted or in

(27:46):
the middle of a fountain. There's just some person wandering
there in the middle of the intersection, you know. Yeah,
and someone has put a sticker over the stop sign
that says Trump or law ugging or animal abuse or whatever. Oh,
I get the I get it now stop whatever I

(28:07):
got you have you never understood that, now, I'm kidding. Okay,
I think I do remember it taking me longer than
it should have, though, And this is the first time
I've ever really admitted it. Yeah, And yield signs, don't
You wouldn't be prone to yield to logging. Everyone yield
to logging. Um, well, the logging industry, they might put

(28:30):
those up that would never take off though, because it
doesn't rhyme. Oh, you're right. Um. So they have many
roundabouts that are uh, you know, in diameter, and then
what they call rural roundabouts, uh, which are very large,
and the only the reason they're large is because it's
rural and you can go a little faster. M That's

(28:53):
the thing. Like, the smaller the radius of the round about,
the slower you have to go around it, which is
one reason why in Atlanta there's so many of those
ones just in the middle of the neighborhood rather than
a speed bump. There's a nice little lovely fountain just
smack dab in the middle of the road, or maybe
it's a tree or something like that, and it's a

(29:13):
barrier an impediment that you're being forced to go around,
so you can't go very fast right with with a
traffic circle, um, that is one of the main goals
of any traffic circles to slow you down and to
direct you safely to where you're going at a slightly
slower rate of speed. Um. But depending on the radius

(29:34):
of the circle, you can go a lot faster on
on the bigger ones. And there's some I saw that
are up to like a hundred meters across or three feet,
which is basically like a football field. That's an enormous
traffic circle. On something like that, you can just haul all.
But I guess I live near a Memorial Drive at

(29:58):
a very dangerous inner section where Memorial Drive kind of
in the neighborhoods where I live is dangerous anyway, because
it is a thirty five street supposedly that's three lanes
that people go about sixty on. Yeah, and there's a
lot of hills and like blind a lot of blind hills,

(30:19):
blind streets, side streets or whatever. Yeah, and it's one
of those that has the reversible like it has a
has a sign above that either hasn't a green arrow
or red X for that center lane. So depending on
the time of day or the lanes mood, yeah, or
the lanes mood, it will switch. And we have we

(30:42):
probably have eight to ten serious serious accidents at the
intersection near my house a year, really scary ones in
So they are they're not doing roundabout so wish they would,
but they are doing a what's called a road diet.
Have you ever heard of that. That's when you actually
lessen the uh, you shrink, not in size, but you
what's the word I'm looking for. I don't know that.

(31:05):
They're basically shrinking the travel lanes to make it safer.
So they're that middle lane is going to be a
turn lane now and not a reversible traffic lane, so
there will only be one lane of traffic going each
way with the turn lane, with the idea that that
is less confusing, it slows things down supposedly and gets
people that are turning out of the way. Yeah, a

(31:26):
reversible lane is just a bad idea, especially on Memorial.
It's not a thirty five mile our road. Now, Atlanta
has two very notable in that area, Memorial Drive in
and de Cab Avenue. That are both people drive way
too fast on these roads, and they're both have these
reversible lanes. So I wish they would do a big

(31:48):
roundabout right near my house, but they'll they'd never go
for that. Yeah. I actually um just barely escaped death
once on De Cab Avenue because I hadn't noticed that
the lane was reversible, and I took a left in
front of a guy in the reversible lane next to me,
and just he just stopped just in time. I had
no idea that he was there because I didn't realize

(32:09):
the lane was reversible. Yeah, it was. Man. Even just
thinking about it now, I get the shivers. You see
the chicken skin. They're like quills, all right. So there
are more types of than the just the regular roundabout,
and they are as follows. To me, I couldn't tell
the difference in the dog bone and the dumbbell. I

(32:30):
got this really because they looked just the same to me,
did they? You looked him up and they looked the same, Huh,
I thought, so, Okay, but that just maybe the Internet
messing with me could be. So, like a dog bone
one is two traffic circles, and but it's one contiguous
road going around both of them and connecting the two. Okay,

(32:54):
So it's like you go around one circle and then
you go on a little bit of a straight away,
and then suddenly you're in the next circle, and you
go around that circle and you're back onto the other
side of the straight away, and then you're back onto
the other circle. Right, that's a dog bone one. Just
imagine what a dog bone looks like from the sky.
A dumbbell. Sure, a dumbbell. Uh. Traffic circle is a

(33:15):
traffic circle and another traffic circle, and there are two
distinct ones, and they're connected in the middle by a
roadway like a dumbbell. So it's not one contiguous road,
even though it kind of is. It's it's much more
of like a right turn when you get into one
circle or out of one circle to get to that

(33:36):
main road. How about this, Everybody go look up a
dog bone traffic circle and a dumbbell traffic circle, and
you'll say, Okay, the way that this article put it
is the dog bone traffic circle. It looks like you
took a big traffic circle and pinched it in the middle,
and then the the like two circles form on the

(33:56):
outer edge, and it's kind of flattened in the middle
of the two. I think that's a pretty good description. Again,
just go look up pictures of them. Yeah, if you're
listening to I'll pull your car over though, Oh good point,
put your phone down. Yeah. Uh. The Hamburger roundabout is
just like a regular roundabout, but the main road there
crosses the center island. So if you want to go straight,

(34:19):
you can just go straight. If you accidentally, let's say,
get in the roundabout, you can still exit in and
go like you were going straight on that main road. Though,
you have two options basically, yeah, if you want to
go straight, and then from what I saw, if you're
that that road, the Hamburger line road that goes straight
through the circle is the one with the right of

(34:39):
way and everything. Everybody else getting into the circle and
um going around the circle has to yield to that
that road going right through. It seems okay, It seems
a little much like you've you've taken roundabout design too far.
If you've made a Hamburger this is my opinion. Uh yeah, agreed.
So there's a flower one to chuck, which is pretty Yeah,

(35:03):
it doesn't mean the flowers in the in the center circle,
although they are often there. But this is where you
have a regular traditional roundabout, but the right hand turns
are there's another little little slip road outside the roundabout.
It's called a slip lane, and I think that just
I don't know, maybe that makes a little easier. Yeah.

(35:24):
So if you're actually entering the traffic circle, that means
you're either going straight, turning left, or making a U turn.
If you're doing right turns, you're just directed right. You
don't ever make it quite to the traffic circle. It's
just like your take your right go over there. And
I mean, at the very least it would cut down
on congestion um and probably it would because there's fewer

(35:44):
people entering the traffic circle. Would just cut down on
accidents altogether. Um. And then another one's turbo a turbo roundabout,
which is basically like a flower roundabout. But the thing
is it's um it's multiple lanes, but you have to
choose what lane you want to be in depending on
what you want to do. If you want to take
a right turn, you get in the far right lane.

(36:06):
If you want to go straight, you have to get
in the um the middle lane. If you want to
turn left, you get in the left lane, and depending
on what you're doing, it will direct you around the
traffic circle to where you want to go. But the
reason you have to choose a lane is because once
you're in it, you can't move like there may be
a curb or there's some flowers or something like that.

(36:26):
And these are supposedly way safer. I saw something like
fewer accidents. Yeah, they allow for more UM cars. They
make you um think about what you're doing a lot more,
so you tend to go into them a little slower,
even though it's called the turbo roundabout UM. And the
reason why there's fewer accidents is there are fewer conflict points,

(36:47):
right DoD we talk about conflict points yet, so if
you enter an intersection, a four or four way intersection
with a traffic light, there's actually thirty two of what
are called conflict points, and they're basically thirty two places
that you could possibly get into an accident, and some
of them can be really bad, like a t bone

(37:09):
right where you turn left in front of an oncoming
car and it hits you right in the middle. They
are bad. I got turned over once, hanging upside down
in my car for getting t bone. Yeah, seat belts
man um. And then there you could also get a
head on collision. Those are particularly bad too. Those don't
exist in traffic circles. It's not possible for you to

(37:32):
get t boned or to get into a head on
collision in a traffic circle. Right. There's actually only eight
conflict points in a traffic circle rather than thirty two,
so that automatically means there's gonna be fewer accidents. And
then with a turbo um traffic circle, they have fewer
conflict points. I didn't see where, um, but I think

(37:53):
because of them in the flower ones that they direct
right hand turns outside of the circle. Um, it probably
cuts it by half, maybe even the number of conflict points. Right.
And we're talking about cars here. Pedestrians and cyclists also
figure in UH. And like we said before, pedestrians they
usually have a crosswalk on the legs behind those yield

(38:14):
signs and some kind of UH they call it landscaping
buff or something sort of there to intuitively keep you
out of that intersection and directed toward where you should cross.
If you're a cyclist, Uh, you have a choice. You
can either get off your bike and then act like
you're just a walking pedestrian and go that way, or

(38:36):
you can get in that traffic circle and they should
treat you like a car and they suggest that you
ride kind of in the middle of it, so cars
aren't um incentivized to try and go around you right
in the middle of the lane. Yeah. Yeah, because a
car going around a cyclist in a traffic circle, that's
that's probably your recipe for accident for sure, dude. And then, um,

(39:00):
did you say that pedestrians are the actually the ones
in a traffic circle who have the right of way
above everybody else. No, I didn't. I didn't say the
right of way. But pedestrians always have the right of
way on or should have the right of way on
roads in America. But I mean not like expressways obviously.
But you you know, be smart. You still just don't

(39:23):
go like a running through there saying I've got the
right of way right. If you hit me, you're in trouble,
it's your fault. You want to take another break, Let's
do alright, dude, So there are some real benefits to roundabout.

(39:58):
One of the things we already talked about is that
safer just by by definition, they have fewer content conflict points.
So with fewer places that you possibly can get into
an accident, there's going to be fewer accidents, um. And
I've seen a lot of different statistics. There's some old statistics.

(40:18):
There's one there was a study from two thousand that
looked at twenty four new roundabouts in the US and
found that there was a seventy six percent decrease in
crashes that resulted in injuries, and decrease in crashes that
were fatal or incapacitating, And then there was about at

(40:39):
reduction and crashes overall. Those are numbers that's enormous, um
and they they seem to be held up like I've
seen different studies that have slightly different numbers, but they're
all definitely in that same ballpark, and they all amount
to the fact that traffic circles are just way way
safer than intersections with lights, just ridiculously safer. Again, it's

(41:03):
impossible to get into a head on collision, and it's
impossible to get t bone and those are the two
most dangerous kind of accidents you can get into. Yeah,
they're also cheaper um over time. It's to build a
round about, it cost about the same roughly depending on
you know, the size obviously as a regular like traffic
lighted intersection or traffic light. But these traffic lights over

(41:27):
time cost a lot more to maintain um about five
to ten tho dollars a year and maintenance over their
life of fifteen to twenty years. I would think that's
how much like a traffic light cost and then that
was it. That's an enormous amount of money. Yeah, well
these are this government money, though, I guess that's I

(41:47):
wonder if that's for all all the lights in an intersection.
They can't be per light, right, I don't know, man,
Yeah probably, I don't know who knows, but yeah, that's
a lot. And that's the thing with traffic circles. You
don't have lights. You got four yield signs on the
outside legs, and everything else is basically just paying somebody
to keep the grass cut and the flowers watered in

(42:09):
the center island, maybe some paint on the road yea,
And eventually, you know, they said about twenty five years,
you might need to do some reconstruction on the roundabout
from uh, from dummies hopping the curb and stuff like that.
Oh yeah, that's the time. I couldn't think of why.
I'm like, you're really wearing your your roundabout out if

(42:30):
only last twenty five years. But yes, of course people
do hit the curb, especially apparently. Um, eighteen wheeler drivers
are not particularly big fans of roundabouts because if the
radius is really tight there, they just can't navigate it.
So some roundabout designs have included an apron, which is
basically like a curved curb that you're not supposed to

(42:52):
drive on. But if you're an eighteen wheeler, it's just
a little extra bit of room that you can get
through the traffic circle with. Yeah, um, what else is there? Oh?
I know, I know their benefit this one. They are
green man, and I hadn't thought about it. But when
you stop at an intersection, come to a complete stop,
especially if you're sitting there idling at a stupid red light,

(43:14):
you're just sitting there burning gas, and then you burn
a lot of gas to go from a complete stand
still up to accelerate to the normal speed again too,
you don't have that in a traffic circle, or you
have a lot less of it because people can just
go right into the circle if they're getting in where
they're fitting in America, Yeah, yeah, there are some numbers

(43:37):
around that. It uh, it reduces delays depending on the
roundabout anywhere from and this improved flow reduces fuel consumption
and emissions by about or more. Yeah. I saw less
gas used from a study back in two dozen two,
again an old study, but I didn't see anything newer

(43:59):
than that. Should we talk about some tips? Yes, this
is this is the public service segment of this this episode, Chuck,
and I really feel like we can do some real
good here. Yeah. I mean we've kind of covered some
of these. But if you don't know about how to
navigate a round about, you approach it. As you approach it,
take a deep breath, relax. You can do this, no

(44:22):
big deal. And you're gonna see that diamond shaped or
it's actually not diamond shaped. It's it's upside down triangle. Right,
it's two triangles put bottom to bottom, but to butt
backside to backside. Are they they're not diamond shaped, are they? Yeah? Yeah,
it's like a triangle triangles No, these aren't yield signs.

(44:46):
This is a this is a roundabout sign. Beware of
approaching a round about. Yeah, it's it's basically like a
quick graphic that's like basically a rough map of the
round about your dealing with it. Show the number of
suggested speed. All that gotcha? Gotcha? So take a look
at that. So you know what you're about to go into.

(45:06):
Our article is so dumb. It says it has a
suggested speed, usually around twenty or thirty miles per hour.
Don't just default to that, you know, look at the
suggested speed if there is one, or just slow down.
It's pretty intuitive of how fast people are going. I
feel so bad for pumps right now. For what pumps

(45:26):
climp pump free. Oh yeah he wrote this one. I
thought it was pretty good. No, it is good, but
there's a couple of things you should clean up. Yeah,
the counterintuitive thing. We definitely disagreed with that. All right,
so slow down to that speed, look for people, look
for bikes in the crosswalks. And again, if there's somebody
in that crosswalk, you stopped because they got the right away. Yeah,
but so you yield to them. But if it's clear,

(45:48):
you go to that yield sign. You look left to
see if anyone's coming, and if no one's coming, you
ease into that traffic circle. Ideally you don't have to
stop at all, but if there's cars there, of course
you do. But if not, you just keep that flow
going and go around that circle as many times as
you need to feel comfortable exiting the circle right, and

(46:08):
when you're in there, don't stop. No, not stop while
you're in the traffic circle. Again, if you're freaked out,
just drive around in the circle and hum to yourself,
give yourself a little like many lobotomy right, and then
when you're comfortable, do your thing. But remember you still
need to use your your signals right, So if you're
taking a right at that first leg, it's gonna be

(46:30):
pretty quick and painless. You just stay in the right
lane and you go around, and you turn right. You
turn your right right signal on and make a right
hand turn. Yes, it gets a little more complicated if
you're going straight, but really it's not, because if you
stop and think about it, all you're doing is swerving
around an island and going back into the path that

(46:52):
you were on before. Yeah, then there are multiple lane
roundabouts I have. I don't think I've ever been in
one of those. Oh yeah, I do. There's I mean,
it's it's it's a little more complex, but it's it's
really not in the key to those or you just
don't change lanes. You pick the lane you need to
be in, and once you're in it, you don't change lanes,

(47:14):
right and and it's just it's just two lanes going
in the same direction together. So if you're gonna go,
if you're gonna turn left, you already want to be
in the left lane of the two lanes, and you're
going to go into the inner lane of the traffic
circle right. And then when you take that left turn,
what you're really doing for as far as the circle

(47:36):
is concerned, just taking a right. But let's not confuse
things further. When you take that left turn or make
that left under that left leg, you're staying in that
that lane. There's gonna be a lane for you to
go into that whole time. So you just stay in
your lane and go to where you want to go,
and everything is totally fine. It's not that much more
complicated for a two lane one. Yeah, not really, just uh,

(47:59):
you know, be careful with all this stuff. Don't get
barreling in there if you're not. You know, even if
you do feel comfortable with your own self, not everyone
else is. Yeah, that's a big one to remember. So
just remember even though you've slowing down, maybe more than
you want to, it's still better than stopping in a stoplight. Yeah.
And I have to say also, like it would not
hurt to go watch like a two minute video on

(48:21):
how to navigate around about Like there's it's not hard,
but it's a lot easier to see it with like
some video than it is to hear somebody describing it,
you know, Yeah, for sure. So I we got to
talk about a couple of like roundabout things in pop culture. Okay,
it was actually let's do it. We already talked about

(48:42):
European vacation, right, but there's actually a dude who holds
a record for the UM I guess, the longest time
driven on a single roundabout? Oh really? Yeah, a guy
named or In Sands from Carmel, Indiana, which, as far
as I can tell, Carmel, Indiana, uh has sixty roundabouts,
which is more than any other city in the United States. Yeah,

(49:06):
how many did you say? Sixty Carmel. Dude now has
a hundred and five. Wow. Man, they've gone bonkers with
a hundred. That was July of last year, and they
have a hundred and forty proposed. Wow. It's the roundabout
capital of the United States. Well, they also have and
that's appropriate because they have the roundabout king Or in

(49:27):
Saints who on October drove his Volkswagen Cabriole around a
dog Bone roundabout in Carmel for three hours, thirty four
minutes and thirty three point to four seconds, which set
a record only because it must have been the first
time anybody's ever done that. Was He just one of

(49:50):
those guys. It's not comfortable, so he just kept going
out to set a record. He he was out to
set a record, but it all start because he was um.
He got distracted once and ended up having to go
around the dog Bone Um roundabout and decided, you know what,
I'm gonna just set a record here, so we did.

(50:12):
He's that kind of guy in that kind of town.
I got some stats for you as far as the
United States go, American drivers, on average passed through one thousand,
one eighteen intersections before you encounter a roundabout uh. And
in France, you were more than twenty five times more
likely to go through a roundabout than the States. Also

(50:33):
very big in Germany obviously, Great Britain, Spain, Australia. Uh
And in fact, Australia, I think his second to France.
You got through one round about every sixty five intersections. Yeah,
I saw that. Australia's roundabout crazy too. Uh. And as
far as the US goes, the state of Florida has
the most, although the state of Maryland has the highest

(50:56):
concentration of roundabout. So and Maryland, I believe it's uh,
you're likely to pass through one once every three hundred
and sixty three and South Dakota is the least likely
state number fifty um. And I guess I mean there's
no one in South Dakota. You don't need roundabouts, It

(51:18):
makes sense. But it's uh, on average once every hundred
and six intersections, which I think means there's only one roundabout.
I think. So it's right in the middle of a
wagon trail. Yeah. And we you know, we got to
talk about Swindon, Yes, we do. So. Swindon has something

(51:40):
that's actually the actual name of it is the Magic roundabout.
It was originally called County Islands Ring Junction, but it's
so nuts that they renamed it Magic Roundabout and that
was a nod to a kids show and that was
very popular in Europe in the sixties and seventies. Yes,
Swindon obviously in England. If you're a fan of the
Ginnel BBC Office then you know about Swindon. It takes

(52:03):
a lot of guff on that show. It's sort of
a running joke. Okay, so just setting the stage, is that?
Where is that where the the British office was set? No,
but they take on very early in the in the
in the show, they take on workers from the Swindon
branch that had closed and there I don't know what

(52:23):
the inside joke is, but they're just a lot of
little barbs kind of thrown at Swindon throughout the show. Yeah,
I could see that, who knows. I've never really watched
the British version, man, it's so good. The American version
is pretty great too, is there both great? It's one
of those rare cases where they just nailed it in
both both countries. Nice. So in Swindon. Swindon's big claim

(52:45):
to fame is that they have that that magic roundabout.
So get this. The magic roundabout is five clockwise roundabouts,
many roundabouts that form a circle outside a an internal
big roundabout that goes counterclockwise. Well know, inside an external

(53:07):
wouldn't it be they're contained within the outer one? Oh okay,
I thought it was that they were. They were around
the outside of an inner one. So there's an outer
one that goes that that the the five are inside.
That makes way more sense. Yeah, Like, just go to
wired dot com and there's an article called the Brilliant

(53:29):
Sorcery of England's seven Circle Magic and they have a
a little moving graphic of how this thing works. And
it will as an American and maybe even as a European,
it will break your brain as a human being. Yeah,
when you look at this thing, when it shows how
everything works in motion with different color arrows going around

(53:52):
like it looks like chaos, but apparently it works. I
wouldn't want to make you gotta really know what you're doing.
But if you do know what you're doing, it works.
I saw over twenty five year period again, and so
so what I'm seeing here is that there are five
five of these roundabouts all connected. There's an inner closs
anti clockwise roundabout, and an outer clockwise roundabout, so it's

(54:15):
technically seven roundabouts all forming one giant circle. Yeah, that's
what I'm seeing. Um But despite all this, in twenty
five years, they've only had fourteen serious accidents and about
a hundred lesser accidents in twenty five years. Yeah, and
I think a lot of those involved, uh bicyclists, And
now they have solved that, they think because there is

(54:37):
now a cycle lane on the outside of the whole
thing with something called the pelican crossing. I don't know
what it is to you, Yes, I looked it up.
I'm like, that doesn't make any sense. It's called a
UM pedestrian light controlled crossing. It's kind of like a
terrible acronym. But if you know, when like you're you
want to cross, rather than wait for like the light

(54:57):
to change, you can press the button and the light
comes on. Everybody has to stop. That's a pelican crossing. Okay,
So they think that's solved what little, you know problem
they had with accidents. Yeah, it's pretty impressive, man. I
think one of the other reasons is there's not more accidents.
People who don't know what they're doing. Just stay out. Yeah,
you know, rent a helicopter? Why not you got anything else?

(55:23):
I got nothing else? I like this one. This is
to me is one of my favorite kind of stuff
you should know episodes, civil engineering ones, traffic ones. What
just sort of like ballpoint pins, like a very rudimentary
thing that's actually brilliant in its simplicity and has in
unique history. I love this stuff. Yep. Well, if you
want to know more about traffic, circles and roundabouts, go watch.

(55:44):
Some videos are actually kind of mesmerizing. Uh. And you
will learn to be a better driver as a result,
and maybe none of us will ever have to wait
at a red light again. Ever. Uh. And since I
said that it's time for listener mail, oh no it's not.
Oh what is the time before? And then well I
didn't get one. So when occasionally that happens, okay, not

(56:05):
to say it in get an email. I just did
not prepare one. I see, I see. But sometimes when
that happens, we will do this. We will encourage the
sharing of stuff you should know. Oh yeah, tell some friends,
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If you have not left a rating or a review

(56:26):
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(56:48):
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(57:10):
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(57:32):
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(58:00):
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