TheDrive-
The concept of a roundabout isn’t that complex. You pull up, wait until there’s a safe opening in the flow of traffic, enter the circle, and go with the flow until you turn off at the desired exit. Of course, these fancy circle roads aren’t exactly common, which is why folks in Rowan County, Kentucky were utterly confused when they attempted to navigate their first-ever roundabout.
Roughly 4,000 cars pass through this intersection of Routes 60 and 801 in Morehead, Kentucky each day. In addition to being a busy roadway, the four-way stop is also coined as a rather dangerous one. Despite having flashing lights, stop signs, and other traffic control devices, the intersection has earned a reputation for a high number of severe crashes, as reported by local news station WKYT. Officials decided that the best way to reduce the severity of the accidents was to set up a roundabout. read more
I hate em…
Roundabouts work great in low to medium traffic, but are a real problem if they are subject to heavy traffic.
At least in my experience.
First of all, they are called rotaries. Second, why complicate a ‘rotary’ AND make it more dangerous?
I grew up and learned how to drive in Boston, and there were rotaries everywhere. Why on Earth do they have drivers going in two different directions in the circle???
Enter the rotary from the RIGHT and keep moving around the circle counterclockwise until you come to the road you want and exit to the RIGHT. If you miss your turn, do another loop!
Turn LEFT into a rotary…. while others are turning RIGHT… are you kidding me???
What is so difficult about putting in a traffic light? I hate roundabouts
I lived in NJ for 4 years. The roundabouts in the area I lived were a pain in the butt.
Then I moved to E. MI and they thought a double roundabout would be a good idea..NOT!
Semis were having difficulty and if you missed your turn, you were shunted back onto the express way and the closest off ramp to turn around and attempt it again, was 10 miles away.
During my first trip to England, after flying overnight, I hopped into my associates car and started to doze as he drove. It was strange enough being the passenger on the left side of the car. Imagine my horror as we approached a roundabout and went left! I almost pissed my pants!
Good place to find car parts in my area. Mostly broken glass and plastic with occasional hubcaps.
We’ve got a couple of crosses with flowers at the roundabout here. Saw a Buddhist priest doing a ritual at the site. Apparently a couple of Asians were street racing and didn’t make the roundabout, both were killed. Dunno about the other victim, probably head up their butt and didn’t know whose turn it was to go.
Roundabouts are a pain in the rear because you can never be sure if the other drivers understand the protocol. I hate ‘em.
I have a small roundabout next to my house because the street that I live on is next to a Catholic church and a parochial school. The street used to be a cutoff between NW Blvd. and a main Arterial N. Monroe Street which everyone used to zoom up and down on as a shortcut. The first year after the roundabout was installed there were quite a few knuckleheads who drove right over the top of it and one or more got stuck. It was amusing to watch from my front window to see all the dumbasses who didn’t know it was there and get themselves into trouble.
Whoops!
https://youtu.be/Dv8vVU2bEh0
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Roll up the windows turn up the radio, squint and floor it. Prayer is optional. Everyone dies at some point no sense thinking you can avoid it. Good luck…drive safely.
Roundabouts are a European thing. but they are used to them, we aren’t.
The worst one I ever saw was at the Arc de Triomphe, even in a taxi it scared the shit outta me;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXfGZF2-sUU
I almost got hit on one Sunday.
The other driver’s previous vehicle may have been a Camel so jumping to a car was probably a big enough challenge before the rural roundabout.
DC traffic circles are dangerous places. I worked there 21 years there were very few times I DIDN’T see st least one driver screwing up. And those traffic circles are controlled by signals.
Plain old roundabouts really confuse drivers in the mid-west. They either stop before entering (even when the circle is empty), don’t yield to traffic already in the circle, or just crash over the curbed central reservation.
We already have enough problems with drivers stopping at non-existent stop signs… and other drivers ignoring stop signs.
The sign says YIELD! Not GIVE UP!
So use to scream my dearly departed grandmother at similar intersections…
I learned from the best.
Even more stupid, are the cross-overs where you drive on the wrong side of the road.
The only reason I see for a round-about is when roads do not intersect at a right angle or more than two roads intersect.
They’ve installed eight roundabouts in a five squre mile area in my corner of suburbia. I like them. Sometimes I go through four of them on my errands, and I estimate each one shaves two minutes off my travel time. In rush hour, some of the ones which replaced 4-way stops have each shaved 5-10 minutes each. Sure, there are jerks and goofballs at roundabouts, but it’s low speed idiocy and on head-on action. And the herky-jerky stuff that goes on at 4-way stops makes me grind my teeth.
Maybe when you go thru a roundabout you should have Yes singing Roundabout loudly on your car stereo.
What’s annoying is the roundabouts with 2 lanes. I still don’t understand when to use the inside lane, which I have found myself in at times, because no one expects you to want to exit which is the whole point of the roundabout in the first place. I just send it.
They put those in my town. People used to drive right over them.
But now they’re putting up giant western statues in the middle of them so people don’t drive over them.
Now we just run into statues.
L😂😂🤣L
-MJA
I’m with Jethro, the are all over Europe. While in Ireland, Ghost and I couldn’t believe all the roundabouts that we encountered and yes we had to turn left, not right. That should tell you enough about the whole set-up!
God Bless us all!
The roundabout in that video was installed in a completely wrong application. Unless the drivers were complete morons, it was between two one way streets, so you had cars trying turn against the “supposed” flow. The roundabout is designed for a normal two-way street intersection, with all cars turning right only to enter and exit the chaos zone.
The real fun comes when the idiot traffic designers add an inside lane to the circle. If you’re stupid enough to get into the inside lane, you then have to work your way to the outside “exit” lane when you want off the merry-go-round. It’s prime for road rage.
The roundabouts on the old highway Seltice Way between Post Falls and Coeur d’ Alene, Idaho have warning signs to yield to large trucks and let them have the right of way when they’re using the roundabout. And a 15 mph speed limit in the roundabout.
My formerly small town had a town square with a statue in the middle of the square (and no, nobody drove through the square and hit the statue – he was a sacred monument to the confederate soldiers. In fact at the start of the George Floyd, Burn-Loot-Murder riots, a group of pansy-ass blacks tried to vandalize the statue. They were met by heavily armed local citizens – some on horses – “suggesting” that they go on back home or somewhere else other than here.)
Anyway, as part of the downtown revitalization streetscape many years ago, they constructed a roundabout around the square. So we call it the “Squircle”
You approach these things at 60 mph from the far right lane you drift over to the left lane halfway through the circle and then drift back into the right lane as you exit the circle at 50 mph.
Then you punch it until you get to the next one.
Loads of fun when they’re icey.
The secret to roundabouts: don’t flinch.
Rewrite the traffic ordinances so that traffic entering the roundabout have right of way over traffic already in the roundabout. Problem solved, heh-heh-heh.
My dad came up from NC 23 years ago for a visit, when I was living in Gettysburg. He wanted to run over to York for an afternoon, to visit a shop he’d heard about.
Taking U.S. 30 west out of town, one goes through several roundabouts before getting to York. After the third one, my dad asks – “Haven’t these Yankees ever heard of a 4-way stop?” 😆
Near where I live there’s a roundabout that’s the right angle intersection of two roads. The North/South road is four lanes either side of the circle. The East/West road is four lanes to the West but only two lanes to the East. The asymmetrical signage is a hoot! Double and single curvy arrows showing what lane to be in in order to go where you want to go. Plus, this is Gulf Coast Florida, full of snow birds all winter who may know the roads back home, but aren’t familiar with the nightmarish oddities of Sarasota County traffic engineers. Add all this up and you’ll understand why we call this intersection the Circle of Death.
People, c’mon. NASCAR turn. Tokyo drift. DUKES OF HAZARDS.
D.O.T. is puttin’ Hot Wheels stunt accessories on the highway for your enjoyment. I will be happy to give demonstrations in my P71 as to the proper way to drift a roundabout.
American’s can’t even navigate a four way stop sign.
Everywhere in my town, where there used to be “Yield” signs, are gone and replaced with full “STOP” signs.
Terrifying on a motorcycle to put it mildly.
4 way stops don’t work so well when there is a lot of traffic. Too many people want to be “friendly” and give up their turn to go to let the other person go first. Soon, everyone is trying to go because no one knows whose turn it really is. Still, I hate traffic circles. They get put in because the DOT says their computers show they are better than stop sings, which, of course, don’t always prove true in real life. I did have to laugh at one installed in our then current city. It was put in at the edge of town, so had little traffic. Then a development went in and two years after being installed, it had to be removed because it was too small to let the firetrucks through. But that is how government works, isn’t it?
Pretty much all of the roundabout’s I’ve ever encountered were with a county sponserd Tandem with 50K worth of sand and and truck and a 10 foot plow….I seemed to be special…..
The new roundabout at Meyers California at the intersection of 50 and 89 south of Lake Tahoe is actually a huge improvement – no more waiting to make a suicide left turn just slip right in. That said I still think that they’re so gay they should have a cut out figure of Charles Nelson Reilly in the middle of the circle.
Charles Nelson Reiley has a pretty bad ass theme song though…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLnapb-30hA
The busiest intersection in my hometown was a huge “traffic circle”. It was the start of the main drag which teens cruised at night. We all knew how it worked and we liked it.
Later in life, I was stationed in England and that whole island was infested with them. I loved them and became an expert at blending right in with the traffic when using them. The English are crappy drivers but I never had a fender bender of any kind.
@Burr, Granpa Munster:
If I still had my ’85½ SVO we could have us some fun, my friend!
Roundabout, shmoundabout. Rotary, shmotary. I grew up calling them “traffic circles” along with everybody else and never heard any other term until I was maybe 25 or 30 years old.
Whatever you all ’em, I like ’em. If you approach the circle with the right attitude, they are a lot of fun and do in fact save me time. By right attitude, I mean be realistic and acknowledge that if infested with unfamiliar or geriatric drivers they can be hazardous (not life-threatening/maiming hazardous, but fender bender hazardous). I figure the less time I spend in the circle, the lower the hazard. So, I go through ’em as fast as I can. Most around here have some kind of warning sign telling you to slow down to 15 MPH. I try to triple that, and regard 35 MPH as absolute minimum safe speed for getting through a circle, especially when traffic is heavy. One hand on the wheel, one hand on the horn is the way to go.
I need to find a bar somewhere around town with a nice view of a traffic circle. They’re fun to just watch, too.
Al, I got this cop car for less than a grand. 150K and it’s in great shape. Has the 4.6 V-8 that almost seems purpose built for…. twin turbos.
Has the cop shocks, cop springs, cop brakes….needs an alignment because it’s used to having a push bar…has a cop trunk too. Super deep and reinforced.
Don’t know how fast it goes cuz’ the speedo only goes to 120.
Cop car. P71 Crown Vic.
Only drawback is people in front of me slow down because…..cop car.
There is an offramp from the I-70 in Fruita, Colorado that has tandem roundabouts. It is basically a figure eight. Great fun when pulling a trailer.
At the roundabout in Ava you often see 3 people stopped at the ingress “spokes” and nobody knows what to do until the Ava police drive through the middle of the thing because, I’d imagine, he hates the world and is fed up with Ava.
they just put in a roundbout in a residential area. Burrs giving me ideas when we get the next snowfall. Have to practice my drifting.
Damn things suck anyway, might as well make it fun
must be something about Eastern Kentucky, because seems like every other small tow in Western Kentucky has one already … they’re called the town square 😛
@Burr
Crown Vic is a cool car. I wish I bought one instead of the 99 Yukon.
Burr, Granpa Munster
Yea, stab it and steer it.
The P71 variant has special serial numbers. Mine was a detectives car so no cool searchlights. For what I paid for it, I’m having a blast. When I get tired of it I still have a sweet, sweet 4.6 that is twin turbo friendly, and, an overbuilt cop transmission.
If you ever see one for sale cheap or at a police auction, snap it up. Cush ride with a super tits engine that lends itself to modifications and bolt on applications very easily.
1st thing I’m doin is cuttin’ the catalytic converters off. Straight pipes. Half a cigarette and a sawzall. Instant beast mode.
Gotta turn sub twelves brother or it’s not fun.
I hate them. Whoever invented them should be dug up and flogged. J/K But I do hate them.
True….true… but I still haven’t found the top end yet. It’s a cruiser. With the cop suspension it makes what is normally an under powered boat around corners into a sled.
A sled that stops with cop brakes.
So much fun. I see why Elwood recommended a similar setup for his and Jakes Chicago adventure.
Just sayen, Mr. Gasket Shifters where FAR superior to Hurst. Bad ass gate. Don’t know anymore, but back in the day, a freaken short throw.
I will race you in your Lincoln town car.
After I race the local cops. They mostly have S.U.V.s. Little Chevy crap boxes. But they still have a few crown vics. These things fly down the road.
Swindon, UK – The Magic Roundabout
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OGvj7GZSIo
While living in NJ, I appreciated their “jug handle” approach to left turns over the circles.
I call them “circles of confusion”.
I’ll drive five miles out of my way to avoid a multi-lane traffic circle.
“Roundabout” is just another example of the Europeanisation of America.
Fuck Europe.
Columbia MO is the marxist capital of Missouri.
I do not count KC or STL metro because the urban black population make them default marxist. If you take the Demonrat platation slaves out of the mix STL and KC would be conservative.
COMO however chooses to be a marxist utopia. They have 21 roundabouts for a population of 122K, 30k of which are transiate college students.
The COMO commies just adore all things European so they even put tiny roundabouts on 4 way residential streets. One such mini roundabout is right by my mom’s house.
I cause utter horror to these pathetic lefty pansies because I still treat it like a four way stop and just drive my Titan right over the damn circle in the middle when I turn left.
Screw the commie loving bastards.
By contrast Springfield MO has 199K residents and 5 roundabouts. Springfield is also twice the size of COMO.
They are a college town as well, but mostly Christian colleges unlike the COMO God haters, go figure.
HELLFIRE AND SANDY APPLESAUCE!!!!
Lost a hubcap. P71s have 29 lb rims. Indestructible. Designed to run over curbs. …..and they do. Pretty sure that hubcap ended up in New Mexico.