Thanks for introducing me to Practical Engineering on youtube. That video … the 12 year old me would be shaking his head at me for liking that.
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I always refuse to go when they do this. Maybe the next cyclist won’t have to put up with it.
Also, can we please fuck off about holding doors open for each other? The people who do it don’t even like it when you reciprocate the favor if there is another door right after the first one. It’s mostly weirdos who don’t realize they’re getting a sense of power from it or pervs who think it puts women in their proper place.
Ditto!
So hate that “I’m being polite to you so I can feel good about myself”,
even though its costing both of us more time and energy and upending established traffic flow.
It happens car-car, car-bike and car-walk.
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They generally don’t.
Roundabouts are hostile to pedestrians as a consequence of their design, as they are an attempt to keep traffic flowing without the interruptions that people use to cross the road. Drivers also accelerate away from them, which means that the natural place for pedestrians to cross the road isnow the least safe option. Combining lights with roundabouts just gives you the worst of both worlds, as you now have interrupted flow and drivers accelerating out of turns right into the crossing.
Really, roundabouts should only be used for medium density junctions on roads with no pedestrian access. They can handle fairly large volumes of traffic without having to build a grade-seperated junction.
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you could probably put that at the 11 x 8 bridge
probably in the constitution too haha
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Becoming more common in Canada, and people are starting to learn how to use them. Probably hard to retrofit in many areas, though.
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Have a fun little (free, no ads) game: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.gamerocker.traffix
In what situation would a car be wrong to yield to a pedestrian? I guess maybe certain cases of so-called “jaywalking”? On the other hand I see a lot of pedestrians wave cars and bikes through at crosswalks, which frustrates me just as much as cars waving me through when they have right-of-way. Pedestrians, you own the road! Don’t give motorists an inch more than the law requires!
When I’m on foot, I never break my stride when entering a crosswalk. It kinda freaks some drivers out. [For my own safety, I’m always ready to leap back if it becomes clear they’re going to fail to yield…]
I love traffic circles. I was driven around northern England (near Redcar) where they are numerous. Very efficient.
Biggest challenge here (central Ontario, Canada) is fitting them in. One is being installed very close to where I live, but the province had to buy up some farmland and at least one house.
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Came here for this. Like going metric, it’s just too hard to do. American Exceptionalism, I guess.
Sorry.
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That’s the damn truth. Growing up my first experience with a roundabout was The Circle in Berkeley. The rules were simple enough to grasp and it wasn’t even particularly challenging – large with lots of spokes, yes, but only a single lane. Yet, it was always a massive clusterfuck. Apparently the concept of “traffic outside the circle yields to traffic in the circle” is too complex for some folks to grasp.
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Don’t even get me started on metric adoption!!!
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So they’re going to have to work up to things like this:
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That seems like one of those things that looks terrifying when you see it in photos but seems like it would work really well in practice.
Yes! I hate that! Follow the damn rules of the road and everything goes pretty smooth. Just last week someone tried to be nice and and let me leave a parking lot be waving the right of way to me. I refused to play along, then another wave, a toot from the guy behind me. Finally they go, giving me quite the stare for being a jerk. Sigh…
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So some people know to drive on and some don’t?
I agree, they are an adjustment. But an improvement as well.
No, it was terrifying. I was on a project in the UK for seven months in Swindon. I loved the roundabouts.
Then one day I stumbled into the Magic Roundabout. The outer circles go the normal way, the large inner circle moves in the opposite direction. I couldn’t figure out what was going on, although I’d driven there for months. It looks like they’ve added some elements that define the circles; when I was there is seemed to just be a bunch of circles painted on the ground. Fortunately there wasn’t much traffic and I inched across the middle in a panic, looking the stupidest American on the road.
I did go back to tackle the MR, and did manage to get the hang of looping around the outside circles. But I never got used to the clockwise/counter-clockwise/clockwise pattern.
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That’s something I was taught very early on by a driving instructor. The first time I drove on the freeway I instinctively slowed down to let a slower moving vehicle merge from an on-ramp. I was chewed out for that and told in no uncertain terms that when it comes to right of way principals, it’s often more dangerous to be courteous than it is to stick to the rules of the road. (That’s not saying you should be an asshole at all times, just that blind courtesy can be really dangerous to yourself and others.)
Right. But this requires folks coming onto the highway to properly match speed as they merge. This seems to be difficult for some. It’s a skill they need to practice.
At the risk of beating this horse further, another peeve of mine is people slowing down before they exit the highway. In most situations, there is plenty of room to merge into the off-ramp at highway speed and then use the brakes to slow down.
