Roundabouts! We have about 20,000 of them in the UK – but the USA has only about 3,000. A lot of American drivers are unfamiliar – and maybe uneasy – with them. As this article from Minnesota explains:
” When America began to aggressively expand its highway network after World War II, engineers dropped the rotary in favor of signalized intersections. But other countries stuck with the roundabout concept. Over the years, they developed improvements that led to today’s smaller, slower and safer roundabouts.
Roundabouts “are not just some Scandinavian social-science program,” .. “They’re based on a lot of traffic engineering science, developed primarily out of the U.K. and Australia.”
So highways engineers in Minnesota are trying to reassure drivers about them with the video below. It’s slightly weird to see a familiar concept here treated as something odd on the other side of the Atlantic…
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJTKrrInO90[/embedyt]
There will be even more people using the roundabout at the Webster Way / Eastwood Rd junction once the new Pound Stretchers store opens next to M&S. Thank goodness we are attracting quality retailers into the town…..slowly but surely people we are turning into Basildon…..
Oh we’re goinin round in circles on this one
On a serious note roundabouts in our locality that drivers have difficulty in understanding. Hullbridge/Rawreth Lane & Rayleigh Weir roundabout. Some shocking displays of driving demonstrated daily on these roundabouts
It would be nice if the traffic was as light as the roundabouts in that video
It would also be nice if drivers remembered they were supposed to go round the white bit in the middle of mini-roundabouts, particularly the ones at Eastwood Road/Websters Way, Hambro Hill/Hockley Road and Hockley Road/Uplands Park Road. Cutting the corner on a mini roundabout is technically going round a roundabout the wrong way…