Yeah, I’m in Wisconsin and I constantly hear people complain about the roundabouts. The thing is by law any new intersection that is built the first considered option must be a roundabout. So we are going to be seeing lots more of them.
That being said I was hit in a roundabout in Oconomowoc by an older mexican woman who had NO clue how they worked. Insisted to the cop that she was in the right, even though I was already in the roundabout. She kept pointing to the yield sign and implying that it wasn’t a stop sign so she was in the right for just plowing into my car. Fucked up my irreplaceable Audi 200 20v turbo quattro in the process. So I should hate the damn things. But if everybody just knew how they worked things would be A-OK.
If you really want to get a good understanding of how traffic moves in waves, just start driving fast all the time. It becomes painfully apparent. The problem is almost always people driving in the left lane and NOT PASSING. Traffic starts bunching up. Suddenly your in “heavy” traffic. But if you drive like a maniac and go 100mph all the time, and do whatever it takes to get to the front of the pack and break through… then there is NO traffic at all for like the next five miles, until you run into the back of the next pack. Then repeat the process all over.
So the problem isn’t people speeding, its people who are driving slow in the left lane. Because of them I have to resort to aggressive driving behaviors like passing in the right lane, passing on the hard shoulder, passing on the soft shoulder, “pushing” the traffic, coming up hard on other drivers (really just scaring them into thinking they are going to get hit so they get out of my way - this doent work on assholes who never watch their mirror), flashing my lights, etc.
If I was a traffic cop I would do nothing but pull people over for driving in the left lane. I could probably write a couple hundred tickets a day.
