The United States are widely free from roundabout tyranny with only one for every 33,330 people. A good thing too because people passing by Hollister, just south of Silicon Valley, can't seem to grok their new one.

Maybe they were too busy looking at the clothes?

As a UK inhabitant I am fully used to roundabouts in nearly all their forms.

This Easter I was visiting The Netherlands and came across some of these with the lane dividers. First encounter was... eye opening.... not only do you have to go backwards (feature of driving on the right/wrong side of the road) but the lane dividers will punish you for poor lane discipline.

On thinking about it, I come to the conclusion that a lot of UK roundabouts could do with the upgrade - if only to improve the default "I drive where I like, how I like" attitude of many UK motorists by taking out wheels and suspension...

I whole heartedly agree with your last paragraph and I'm sure you will get lots of upvotes for it :-)

I don't understand. The rules are fairly simple in the UK.

If you're in a Range Rover with blacked out windows you drive where you like

If you're in a Range Rover you give way to the above, but otherwise drive where you like

If you're in a car give way to any range rover as they'll drive where they like but otherwise follow the car hierarchy (Audi* first... then everyone else)

Taxis exist.. but you'll be constantly surprised how they're still moving and relatively undented as they also drive where they like.

Box Junctions are a thing, but only if you think the lights won't change, otherwise you'd have to wait longer and who can be bothered with that. Screw others.

'Keep Clear' is merely painted there to keep that bit of the road surface slightly more protected.

If you see any vehicle with blue flashing lights forget everything you were ever taught and just wildly jam on your brakes. Doesn't matter where you are or what's around you. If you can aim to stop in the least convenient place possible more the better, as the driver of the ambulance will get to practice their 'stink eye' scowl at you.**

* This used to be BMWs first, but it seems to have changed

** It's probably worth mentioning in the UK the general rule isn't just to stop as our roads are often quite narrow. I believe in the US, as roads tend to be larger, then the accepted approach is just to stop dead.

It's probably worth mentioning in the UK the general rule isn't just to stop as our roads are often quite narrow. I believe in the US, as roads tend to be larger, then the accepted approach is just to stop dead.

Watch a few videos from [1] the Chris Martin[0] Youtube channel , he's a response paramedic in the UK and it's good to see from his point of view what is good and bad driving.

[0] Not Coldplay - I'm evil, but not that nasty...

[1] https://www.youtube.com/@ChrisMartinEMS

"Taxis exist.. but you'll be constantly surprised how they're still moving and relatively undented as they also drive where they like."

The one time I got knocked off my bike was by a taxi. I was cycling round the roundabout (in the correct lane, wearing bright yellow high viz on a nice sunny day!) . He just entered the roundabout without looking and drove straight into me... No bones broken, thank goodness.

"If you're in a Range Rover with blacked out windows"

It's now a very long time since I drove in London but the last few times I did I remember thinking (probably somewhere like around Aldwych) "I wish I was in a very old, battered, obviously another dent wouldn't matter, Land Rover".

I agree that although the lane markers will punish those who don't pay attention, they are a great idea for enforcing lane discipline. Watching that video reveals how simple a roundabout should be if people would only navigate them properly.

I was in the West of the US for a holiday a decade ago and our tour guide actually took us to a roundabout relatively near the Hover Dam. She was quite proud of being able to drive around it in the minibus.

I agree the Magic Roundabout in Swindon takes some getting used to, but so long as you follow the normal rules and don't try to keep up with the locals, I've found it to be OK.

Did I really cross the Swindon roundabout in the 1970's? Anyway, the first time I encountered it, in very quiet conditions, we were across before I knew what I had encountered. It wasn't until the return trip at a busy time I was staggered at the reality that I had failed to absorb. However, it soon came to be a 'milepost' on a long journey across the country. Made a change from the usual 'pubs-with-interesting-names'.

I remember driving in Swindon back in the 90s and panicking as I saw the signpost for the Magic Roundabout up ahead with no way to turn off.

After driving through it I couldn't work out what all the fuss was about. Follow the same rules as any roundabout and it works perfectly. I found it really simple to navigate. I'm sure the reputation comes from people over thinking rather than any inherent trickiness.

I think my father encountered the Magic Roundabout driving the us up to stay with family in Norfolk a fair few times & he was already way out of his comfort zone.

When I lived, studied & worked in Swindon the tailbacks around & through the aforementioned roundabout in wet weather were horrendous if you went around it conventionally, once you get into the swing of driving it "unconventionally" you could zip through it & out again in seconds (Probably causing the stop\start tailbacks to worsen).

I absolutely loved driving through it.

Alas the urban legend that the designer was called Dougal was proven to be false.

"I'm sure the reputation comes from people over thinking..:"

Good one! I'll use that the next time I do something stupid.

Donkeys years ago there was a magic roundabout installed at Moor End, Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire.

For many years there had been a large roundabout at the confluence of six roads. It was decided to turn each of the six road junctions onto the original roundabout into six mini roundabouts and have two way traffic round the original roundabout.

Utterly confusing and counter-intuitive. Until, that is, one realized the thing was just a tiny ring road with half a dozen roundabouts. No hard lane segregation though, just white lines.

I've not been back there for ages now. I assume it's still there and on its original configuration.

Update: based on images from Google Maps, it appears so. [1]LINKY

[1] https://maps.app.goo.gl/NKWnvoUkTZqwDQ2N8

There was, and presumably still is, one at the bottom of Marlow Hill in High Wycombe. It could usefully be applied to this one with plenty of space but still a bottleneck. https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@53.669694,-1.826892,343m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en&entry=ttu

But the Dutch design, even allowing for the ant-clockwise flow, looks horrendous.

Exactly, a roundabout isn't a special case that needs to be learnt: the same rules as for any other road apply. The circular bit of the roundabout is just like any road you are joining - the cars that are already on it have right of way over you. Leaving the roundabout is a change of lane so you indicate, unless the lane you're in is exclusively for leaving the roundabout.

The first time I encountered the Magic Roundabout in Swindon it causes me no problem at all. The same rules apply whether you're on one of the satellite roundabouts or on the central one.

I am only talking above about European roundabouts. I've been on one in Cambodia where cars go clockwise and mopeds go counterclockwise... I think because mopeds are treated as honary pedestrians? Clench what you need to clench and then do as the Romans do.

"the cars that are already on it have right of way over you"

It's difficult to comprehend but that rule only came in about 1966 or 7 and before to that it was joining traffic had priority. Yes the results were as chaotic as you can imagine or even more so. Then it was reversed over a weekend quite easily as it made sense and the nightmare roundabout on my regular commute was transformed on the Monday. But you have to have been driving for nearly 60 years to remember it.

There's a roundabout at the border of Thailand (drive on the left), and Laos (drive on the right).

This is about as chaotic as you imagine as people attempt to negotiate the roundabout to get to the Correct lane for the other country.

When we went through it was a quiet time, but still one of the craziest experiences I've had. We even managed to get through without any damage. But it was a close run thing...

I get that your average USAian is too stupid to work out how roundabouts function, but even Mythbusters proved that they keep the traffic flowing better than the ridiculous habit of putting traffic lights on everything (don't mention the brain dead 4-way stops).

It would seem that 'The Land of the Free' just love being told when to stop and when to go.

The five-light traffic lights are a sight to behold. I have not seen them anywhere else

I'm an American *and* a Californian, nay, a *Southern* California (albeit a transplant from the San Francisco Bay Area, aka Northern California) and I'm a big fan of roundabouts, especially versus traffic lights, which seem to be timed to maximize driver annoyance.

Down here in the San Diego area there does seem to be a trend toward replacing lights and stop signs with roundabouts on what we call "surface streets" (i.e., anything other than the freeway system) and in personal experience they seem to work well.

They nicely self-regulate and traffic flows steadily, as opposed to the fits and starts of 'signalized' intersections.

I'm not sure how well a roundabout would work on a freeway interchange, particularly a merge of two major freeways (I-5 and I-805 down here, for instance -- a major horror show during commute hours and Dobbs forbid it should *rain* -- don't even think about it), so I'm definitely interested in what CalTrans is up to in the Silly Valley.

I've only driven in the UK once, almost 20 years ago, and that mostly on glorified cow paths in Scotland, though I did drive on one motorway (I believe I have the terminology correct) between Glasgow and Edinburgh, nd encountered a couple of roundabouts that were a bit harrowing, mostly because I was driving on the "other" side of the road from what I'm used to. I suspect after a few weeks I would've gotten the hang of it.

Here in Pennsylvania, the Department of Transportation has been installing roundabouts in the last few years. In every case that I know of, the locals complained after a few months when they noticed that the number of accidents was not decreasing. The DoT always replies that the goal isn't to reduce the actual number of accidents -- they concede that that number will probably be about the same as it was before the roundabout -- but to reduce the severity of accidents that do happen. And that does seem to be the case: there are still regular fender-benders, but fewer higher-speed crashes.

Here in Pennsylvania, the Department of Transportation has been installing roundabouts in the last few years. In every case that I know of, the locals complained after a few months

To be fair to them, them new-fangled horseless carriages are pretty new...

"Lower your speed and read the signs…" From casual observation I reckon this would exclude over 90% of all drivers!

I quite like the design but I think the design moves the lane-changing risk from the roundabout to the feeder lanes and I think problems changing lanes are common in many accidents. It's therefore essential to be able to have another a go if (when) you make a mistake.

The problem I see with the "Turbo Roundabout" is that if once you pick a lane, you are stuck there. So if you don't know the area and you find yourself in the wrong lane, then you are going to be funneled onto the wrong road and will have to find somewhere to turn around.

True, but the alternative is when you get people randomly cutting across a lane at the last second because they realise they've screwed up and promptly hitting the vehicle next to them. I can see the benefit of the turbo design from a safety perspective...

SOP is to stay on the roundabout until you've worked out which exit you want.

This is particularly effective you mistakenly approached in the right hand lane (UK version) & wanted to take first left. Of course it would be totally wrong to use this approach to bypass a long queue in the left hand lane,,,

Ah, I see the problem:

1: Slow down and read the signs

I aint gonna have no guvmit telling me what to do!

The thing that really annoys me is when they put traffic lights on roundabouts - totally destroys the flow. There are quite a few I know of in Kent, and in every case I've seen the improvement when they traffic lights are out of action for some reason.

depends on the roundabout some work well with lights. The other pain is when perfectly good roundabouts get REPLACED by lights. On my old commute route in Devonport Plymouth there were a couple of junctions close to each other that did have two mini roundabouts and everything just worked. The council decided to replace this with two sets of traffic lights, quite often you now sit there for 30 sec or more on a red light with sod all traffic coming in any other direction!

Also Ashton-under-Lyne except they weren't mini-roundabouts, one had a BT exchange in the middle of it. I find that once a queue of traffic has built up it's impossible to work out the correct lane because the only indication are the signs painted on the road and those are now obscured.

Many decades ago (when we had PROPER winters) our family returned to the UK after many years living in West Germany. THe last (and only) proper winter was 1962/63. My father was driving from Portsmouth to somewhere in the Midlands in a white-out and the conversation went something like-

Son, which way round the last roundabout did I go?

Son- The right, as usual-

Father looks at son and says "we will have to watch out for those"

Yes, Dad...

It seems rather silly to me to have your first roundabout be a more complicated turbo roundabout. Being Dutch I wouldn't give this a second thought, but if you've never seen any roundabout in your live this one is rather complex. They should have started at level one with a few normal roundabout and only do the complicated ones once drivers are used to those. Get the whole 'going round' concept in there first.

Doesn't work here either:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-65310167

Interrupting two express roads to whack a roundabout in there feels like the planners don't understand the concept fully.

On a UK road (and any European one I've encountered) this would be a three level interchange, like J25 on the M1. It would at least be a two level junction; allowing the primary road's traffic to flow for vehicles not changing to the other road, reducing congestion.

The turbo concept seems flawed too. Roundabouts allow you to keep going round until you've found your exit. Here, aside from the middle lane, you're on rails as soon as your enter the junction.

Do you have speed bumps yet? They are really fun. Smart motorways are a thing too.

Dumbf@cks gonna dumbf@ck no matter where you are in the world. It seems that a much higher proportion of the population now falls into that category and that goes for traffic planners just as much as drivers and other road users. They recently changed the law in the UK to allow dumbf@cks to drive all the way around the outside of a roundabout to turn right, and the only reason for that change I can think of is so that they don't have to prosecute the dumbf@cks for their dumbf@ckery. Another pet hate of mine are roundabouts that are offset or of varying radius, but the worst by far are the idiocy that is roundabouts with traffic lights. What a total f@cking waste of space and time those are. If the junction has that much traffic then you need to start bypassing it with slip-roads or better yet stop putting all the business parks together in one place. Here, every morning 15million cars fight their way out of over-crowded housing estates (subdivisions for the 'Merkins) drive 10-15 miles, and then fight their way into over-crowded business parks. What an utter waste of time and resources.

Username checks out.

We've had a multi-lane roundabout for years. No dividers -- I wish there were, because there are occasionally some nasty weavers -- but it's helped a bit. The worst part is the lower-right exit feeds a freeway which backs up during evening rush hour, which can bring the whole circle to a halt. [1]Big G maps link (satellite)

The county this is in, and its neighbor to the west, have been putting in smaller roundabouts also. [2]Map link to a pair just east of the big one that solved quite the nasty gridlock caused by a short bottleneck between two traffic lights.

Like others say, it may not help collisions -- not everyone gets the idea, the elderly especially -- but they really do help with overall flow.

Detroit is still the "Motor City," and in this aspect we're appears we're ahead of California's "car culture" -- as long as you watch out for "dem dere udder guys" (as my dad says in a Yooper* accent) you'll be okay motoring on through! (*He's from Minnesota, not Michigan's U.P., but the dialect is similar, both halfway to Backwoods Canadian. You keep your stick on the ice and your car in your lane.)

[1] https://maps.app.goo.gl/xFEAK51gWWnEZjFC7

[2] https://maps.app.goo.gl/9KNSDUSJvpVruuVt7