At a certain level of traffic they fail dramatically as one or more entrances never get an opening. It also requires drivers to know the rules. Since, around here at least, they don’t know the rules for right of way at a 4 way stop, I doubt they’d know them for a roundabout.
At that level of traffic a 4-way stop would be even worse.
Since, around here at least, they don’t know the rules for right of way at a 4 way stop, I doubt they’d know them for a roundabout.
I think all of us can agree that it would be a mistake to change out all our 4-way stops for roundabouts overnight.
I was intimidated by roundabouts when I first moved to the UK, but became a convert within a couple of weeks.
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No doubt, that’s what traffic lights are for.
I just got back from a week in Scotland, and I’d say it depended on the geometry and location of the roundabout. Definitely got scarier the closer we were to Edinburgh, there were people flying through them. There were also ones that were roundabouts in name only, there was no center island and one direction could essentially fly straight through!
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[quote=“gellfex, post:44, topic:98825”]
No doubt, that’s what traffic lights are for.[/quote]
Also bad in heavy traffic. You end up sitting in the same block through several light cycles, frustrating as hell. Getting through a roundabout is almost never a problem for an experienced driver in the UK. In part that is because you can’t get a motor vehicle license there without being able t do it.
There were also ones that were roundabouts in name only, there was no center island and one direction could essentially fly straight through!
Mini roundabouts. An excellent solution when one of more of the roads involved is narrow.
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Is it time to mention the Magic Roundabout again? 
1.Yes, that’s it’s actual name and
2. Wait till you notice that the design means that you go around the middle roundabout the wrong way…
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If it helps any, when my chutzpah level is high enough, I can get away with following @Jilly’s
“Have you two met?”
“Does everyone here know one another?”
With
“Okay, then - I’ll start” (indicates self) “Hello, I’m $NAME”
Works better in slightly-formal (work, work-social, or club/society situations, admittedly, but does work.
(I’m also odd enough that a version of “Argh, I’m really sorry, my brain’s totally on the fritz, would you mind going round and introducing yourselves?” works - and yet I still only realised that I really couldn’t trust my facial memory a little while back.
Realising how much I did to compensate, when I did was scary.)
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People who stand on stairs and in doorways of public places like subways and stores drive me batshit. The best part is they’re invariably offended if you’re not perfectly polite asking them to get the fuck out of the way. You see this a lot, no matter how rude someone acts, you better be polite to THEM.
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As someone who grew up with their summers on the lot of a family midway, the lack of situational awareness many folks have around escalators, entrances/exits, or indeed anywhere people are funneled in and out of drives me bonkers as well.
How hard is it to take half a moment to look around and make sure you aren’t obstructing traffic flow before stopping, and if you are step aside first?
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Yeah. But then I mollify myself with the thought that they’re probably more interesting people than the ones rushing so unidirectionally because they’ve already decided on what’s important to their lives.
Just so. As I wrote those 2 words my train pulled in, and the door was blocked by 2 kids with their graduation gowns in hand and their backs to the platform. They didn’t budge as people struggled to get past them.
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It’s especially annoying on a ski hill.
If you’re going to stop and chat, get to the edge of the run, anywhere other than right below the shoulder of the hill where you can’t be seen. Don’t stop in the center of the hill, especially where the sudden change of pitch is going to hide you, i.e. where everyone is going to be aiming, full speed, without being able to see that you’re there.
Everything man-made has a function. It’s irritating when people can’t understand that their use of the thing is unnecessarily interfering with that function for everybody else.
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I’ve been wanting to do a photo essay called “bottlenecks” about people who hang out in chokepoints for years now, but am way too timid to take photos of strangers. Umbrellas were bad enough, but now with cellphones, there is invariably someone at the top of every stairwell using that last bit of signal before descending. That should be an upside to the increase in cell reception underground (though the downsides will be many as well…)
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Same for sidewalks. Why do people do things on a busy sidewalk that they wouldn’t do driving? Walk on the right side. Don’t just stop dead, get to the side, looking over your shoulder so you don’t cut someone off. Dont charge out of a store into pedestrians without looking. And don’t cluster your group of a dozen tourists gawking right in the middle completely blocking the entire walkway.
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Funny. My son and I were in the car the other night and he asked why the street lights in our city were different colors. Some are still sulfur and some are LED now. I guess they just wait for the old ones to die before replacing.
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But what if what the unidirectional-rushers want more than anything is to catch the next R train to get home 15 minutes earlier to play with their daughter?
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Yeah, true. Context does matter.
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To be completely fair, I guess at least some of those bottleneckers could have just been texted a photo of their daughter taking their first steps (not to suggest babies are the only thing that matters, just completing the parallel 
)
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Yes. I just meant to say initially that a bit of that sort of attempted empathy can take the edge off one’s frantic, stressed frustration.
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The thing is, if you teach this behaviour at a young age (“Susie! Don’t just stop in the doorway!”), it becomes second nature. It should be automatic. Blargh.
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Work.
We are well past the point where technology should allow everyone to have at most a 10 hour work week, but we are still caught up on the idea that your right to exist is dependent on how much value you produce for those above you in the food chain.
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