The “magic roundabout” in Swindon has an excellent safety record. After all, everybody gives way to everybody else — even if you are a “pro diver”, you don’t know if the other person has a clue. But you really can slide across it quite fast if luck is with you

I’d love to see the numbers on this thing. I mean, from simple experience I know the simpler type of roundabout (no traffic lights, 4 exits, basically a drop-in replacement for an ‘X’ type of crossing, with traffic lights) can handle a staggering amount of traffic with far better safety records, and far better average wait times per car, compared to the X type crossing.

The bizarre nature of this thing aside, it looks like it can handle a heck of a lot of traffic without the need for traffic lights. That’s very impressive.

It looks like the lines were drawn on there by a 2 year old with chalk.

I guess at first, It’s a little confusing but later when the driver gets familiarized with this roundabout..it’s really a big help..especially with regulating the traffic.

There’s a roundabout in Hemel Hempstead just the same as the one in Swindon. The one in Hemel is known as “The Magic Roundabout” I have been round it in all directions at one time or another, and can say that I have never seen a traffic jam or an accident there.

here in the California .. roundabouts are yet to used ! as an expat it’s amazing … stop signs and lights every where …
I’m driving down down the street and for no apparent reason I have to stop .. and I mean DEAD stop becuase a filthy cop will be parked there waiting to write a ticket.

This would never fly in the US. The driving IQ of us Americans must be several dozen points lower than the rest of the world. My mind is still spinning after trying to figure that thing out.

The British are generally much more intelligent drivers than the US or OZ.
Mainly due to their driving conditions, they’re not as good as the nords (danish, swedish, finnish) But the British, and ppl of Swindon, are more than capable of working out this system. I reckon they even enjoy it.
To those commenters who see this as scary, maybe you’re the type of drivers who need parking sensors! Roundabouts are sooo simple, i reckon this is just fun! But Driver education is important!

This can’t be fo’ real. Are you kidding me?

Why is this brilliant? Simple: No “single point of failure.”

It’s the traffic engineering equivalent of a (data networking) Redundant Packet Ring, where a cut fiber can be switched out of the network that then still operates completely, albeit with reduced performance.

And the rescue/cleanup crews can get to the accident faster without dealing with blocked traffic..

fpg

They had one like this where I used to live in Colchester, Essex, UK. It was great and traffic flowed really well. If one path around it was congested you just went the opposite way. Of course you had to be thinking on your feet and be prepared to make decisions, but it was safe and lots of traffic flowed through it every day. The one thing I do know is that I hate sitting at traffic signals at intersections here in California when a roundabout like this would work so much better, I’m just not sure that Californian drivers could handle it.

(1) I’ve heard that roundabouts can handle some high traffic volume, and often the so-called “difficult” ones are simply over their rated capacity– that is, reverting to a regular traffic light would only make things worse yet.

However, if a particular roundabout covers a very large plot of land, then I have to wonder if the more appropriate comparison is not to a traffic light, but to ramps, flyovers, and overpasses that could be built in the same area. An overpass is superior to a roundabout.

(2) The thought of a tourist going though this “multi-mini” scheme is alarming. The British drive on the opposite side of the road, compared to the most of the rest of the world. The unfortunate tourist is likely to become so disoriented by the multi-mini, that he gets in the wrong lane and drives head-on into oncoming traffic.

Poor yanks are confused…

I wish Americans would adopt these (and learn to use them). When driving in Ireland, I picked up on them with no problems at all. And to not have to stop and sit at red lights forever… wow… the feeling of freedom has to be experienced to be believed.

What I would like to see is a live webcam of the roundabout at high traffic periods. Searched for it on google and wikipedia. Only still photos or first-hand videos. Nothing from above showing the flow. Anyone if such exists?

I come from Edmonton in Canada. We have traffic circles, which are very similar to roundabouts. Traffic circles are awesome when you have a moderate amount of traffic coming from all directions. And, there is no chaos, cars enter and exit it a rather orderly fashion. In contrast, 13 years ago, I watched the traffic in front of Paris’s Hopital dínvalid, where Napolean is buried, and I was amazed at the chaotic crisscrossing of cars in this one intersection. There was a large open area, marked with nothing but three yield lines dividing the space into three sectors. You could stop at any point along the lines, enter the next sector when it was clear, and drive across the sector to the next yield line or exit the intersection. Cars were crossing the sectors at a range of angles. When a yield line was clear four cars would pull out into the next sector simultaneously, with no lane markers to guide them. I watched this spectacle until I felt physically ill. And, it was just a T intersection! Get a picture of that intersection. (It may have changed in the last ten years)

looks kinda like a crop circle. Probably appropriate because only an advanced civilization could understand this thing..

The one in Hemel Hempstead has 1 more roundabout around it, but the increased size of the central island (you can see across the one in Swindon) means that it is far simpler for the non-aware to navigate. the Swindon one requires you to look over your shoulder in a few places to check for visibility, which is hard and conofusing for newbies.

About the safety record, it’s mostly fine except when psycho nutters hit the side of the roundabout at 40mph and try and drive straight across.

what is there was an accident and one path was like blocked …
what then ???
i’m a bit lost …

Hi this is a big ‘regular’ roundabout in Paris (France), it’s called “Place de L’etoile”
I couldn’t find any newer pics (there are a lot more cars nowadays) http://therockblog.files.wordpress.com/2007/05/place-etoile.jpg
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bip/62132301/

This one is even older, and they were renovating the Arch:
http://phastidio.net/wp-content/Etoile.jpg

Are you guys being serious, you don’t understand how these things work?
They really do work, and it’s easier driving it then looking from the top. It makes more sense.

When I lived in South East Essex I regularly went round the one we’ve got in Benfleet called

Tourists don’t know how to use it, but it works brilliantly for locals.

Uh… what’s the problem? You treat each roundabout separately. You come up to it, give way to the right, move around the roundabout, exit it, and do the same for the next one. It’s not hard…

Forget a fence, just put these things along out borders and the mexicans wont be able to figure out how to get in.

If I, an American, ever go there, I think I’d be able to negotiate that only if I put the car’s transmission in Reverse and then navigate by looking through the rearview mirror.

Here in the States, some eastern cities have roundabouts, but they are being eliminated whenever possible. In other parts of the country where new development is taking place and much more space is available, much safer intersections are being laid out.

The problem is that you are going in the wrong direction! I saw the diagram and it gave me a headache, til I realized this must be in England.

As a Yank, I can definitely say that his wouldn’t work here in the States because it involves yielding, a concept most drivers here don’t understand. I wish the roundabouts would catch on here. Learned to use them while visiting South Africa and they seemed to keep the traffic flowing at a much more steady pace than in the U.S.

That’s the whole point of roundabouts, to keep the traffic flowing, which is why you approach in second or third gear, you aim NOT to stop, unlike at traffic lights. Since you are not limited by the lights, you can pick the first available spot to join so the queues are generally much shorter. Unless you’re an under-confident learner driver, where you make sure the whole roundabout is clear before you pull out.

I’d love one of these around where I live.

I live in upstate New York, in a small little hometown america, with a population of maybe 10,000. We just got a roundabout installed in a more traffic heavy area of our town. and the way these bumpkin tards charge through it, in pure american fashion, is fucking terrifying. it’s good to know that at least some people in the world can figure out a roundabout besides myself. god knows my townspeople can’t wrap their little peanut brains around it.

There are places in the US that have embraced the roundabout and are actively getting rid of stop signs and traffic lights. My town (Carmel Indiana) is crazy for roundabouts. We refer to the mayor as Mayor McRoundabout. He has replaced around 30 stop signs and traffic lights with roundabouts. They are now planning a roundabout for a freeway interchange. Sort of a raised roundabout that replaces the cloverleaf typically used on American freeways. I think it might be the first one of its kind in the US, even though they are common in the UK.

I’m an American, and lived for a year+ just outside Swindon in Wanborough back in the 1990s. I loved this roundabout. Initially I feared it, but as anyone in Wiltshire will attest to it is unavoidable! It sucks in all roads like a vortex, so unless you want to bypass it via the M4, it WILL suck you in. My daily route to the train station went through it an very soon I became the “pro” and was able to navigate it with minimal turning. In fact late at night you can cross it in a very straight path. It was always fun to drive through it at speed with a “tourist” passenger (like my first time through it in the passenger seat of my letting agent) who is usually completely freaked by the layout and cars going literally in every direction. It is chaos in appearance but in actuality is a precision ballet of competance. My hat is off to the designers of this interchange and the drivers of north Wilts!

–chuck goolsbee
http://chuck.goolsbee.org

that’s tricky to pull off..

Originally from England I am a big fan of roundabouts. Living in Las Vegas for the last 5 years having to deal with 4 way STOP intersections and the never-ending runs of traffic lights really is irritating when a simple roundabout would help immensely. I think the main reason they would not work in the US is that Americans are either so darn stupid that they cannot grasp the logic of giving way to traffic from the left or are just too darn lazy to go around it the correct way. We do have a few roundabouts here, in places like business parks or housing communities and I constantly see people driving around them the wrong way because it’s a shorter route. I take great pleasure in meeting them head on when I’m going round the correct way.

We have just added a couple of traffic circles in southern Vancouver Island and they work well. My American friends tell me they won’t work in the US because too many people won’t yield, but I’ve seen lots of US tourists manage just fine. Maybe the twits of whom they speak don’t visit this area.

I really can not understand the logic of these or how they are supposed to be safe. These things seem so freaking chaotic to me. Yes, I am an American, but I drive on average 30,000 miles a year, and I have since I got my license 17 years ago.

That’s not scary, its pretty easy!
The crooked billet is scary! And sunbury cross - OMG!

You’ve all missed the best part.
If there are four outlets, the medians and yield points form a swastika!

(I couldn’t help but notice)

there are actualy a couple of roundabouts in cleveland, OH. I think there are like 6 or 7 total.

I bet there is less congestion because everybody bypasses it out of fear

It would work in the US if navigating roundabouts was taught in US driver education courses. Yielding is not much of a problem if the drivers are forced to do it on a regular basis (ie. if you don’t yield, the accident is YOUR fault and the insurance company will jack your rates up). But, they are rare, so unless one has visited another country where they are commonplace, they are a “new” thing that must be adapted to. If those “peanut brains” can learn to disassemble and reassemble an engine for entertainment, then they can learn how to navigate a roundabout.

These do take up a fair bit of land compared to a regular intersection.

the funny thing about that particular roundabout (or series of) is that it’s right next to a football (or ’soccer’) stadium in Swindon, so every other weekend it’s also swarming with drunken pedestrians crossing in every direction..

Oh yeah!
Great engenniers…

Living in the US, “circles” as we simply call them, are not all that common. However, I live in NJ, and they are all over the place in western and central/southern NJ. A few years back, because of the number of accumulated accidents and traffic congestion (NJ is the most densely populated stated in the US), there was a large push to replace all of the circles (roundabouts) with a series of ramps and overpasses.

Not all of them have been replaced, and some are now circles with a ramp going right over the entire circle. I think the replacements have been more frightening than the circles were.

The congestion problems that were seen here in NJ were usually not directly related to the circle, but to the roadways coming off of them. Typical problems would be that one roadway/exit off of the circle would be backed up so badly as to completely lock up the circle, and, thus, causing extreme congestion/standstill to all of those roadways coming on to the circle. In other words: gridlock.

However, I grew up and learned to drive with these things around. You have to admit, they are not for the timid driver.

I wonder just how bad for the environment this is! Just think about the amount of energy expended at this “roundabout” from each car constantly braking and accelerating. But who cares about that? Hence we have hundreds of speed humps here which force you to do the same. Compared to a conventional roundabout or traffic lights where there is little acceleration and braking, this is an environmental disaster.

Verrry cool. When I saw the diagram I thought it was a joke, but then as I thought about it I realised how logical it really is. Roundabouts really are a great way to keep traffic flowing through intersections, unlike our stupid excessive Stop signs and traffic lights. Just try driving through Mountain View, CA to see what I mean; when I worked in Mountain View I lived exactly 1 mile from the office, a straight run down Rengstorff Ave to Charleston. In that 1 mile I had to sit through 6 sets of lights on the way to work, and 7 on the way home. Utterly ridiculous. (And yes, I did walk to work most days but sometimes I needed to drive).

Roundabouts are cheaper that building overpasses or underpasses and don’t require electricity to operate. Nor do they malfunction. And there’s never the “you go, no you go” bullshit that happens when two cars arrive at the same time at a Stop sign.

The first time I saw a roundabout in the States was in New Jersey. Unfortunately it just proved that Americans don’t get it – it was laid out so that you had to yield to cars coming ON to the roundabout, not to cars already on the roundabout. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realise that’s a deadlock waiting to happen.

I live in Australia where roundabouts are common, but grew up in the US. There are a few there, but not enough to make the general population comfortable with them. It is just like anything: if you build more in the US and make them a common traffic situation that is incorporated into driving instruction and day to day life, then people will learn how to use them. I think a little civic action and initial police monitoring over time could change this. Do you remember how people drove on the first freeways? Do you remember when seatbelt laws were established? You can teach a old dog new tricks; It just takes a while.

Up here in Maine roundabouts are definitely starting to catch on. We have two under construction in my town (Auburn) and there’s more planned around the state on top of a couple already built. The Department of Transportation is sick of maintaining traffic signals in East Bum*&^%, and this, in their mind, is but one solution. Come to think of it, a new bypass being built near Portland will have three.