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What's so hard about looking at the signs and/or road markings and getting into the proper lane before you enter the roundabout? It's not rocket science.
A roundabout aka traffic circle with crosswalks is just plain stupid. They need tunnels or overpasses for pedestrians. The great advantage of a roundabout over a bunch of signals is traffic usually doesn't stop.
Flow flow flow.
They are putting those fool things in all around town now. I avoid them as much as possible.
However, there is one (soon to be two) on State Hwy 3 that I can not avoid. Luckily, I only go that way once or twice a year.
The one by the airport is a two lane. It is very simple. If I want to go to downtown Billings, I must be in the inside lane. I rarely use it for that. If I want to go to the airport or through and on up Hwy 3, I must be in the outside lane.
I have a couple of these near where I live. I'm not sure what the rules are really but I only use the blue lane if I am turning right at the first exit. If I am going straight or using a further exit I use the red lane. I've yet to have a problem.
Keep the blue and red cars coming from the bottom, the red car at the bottom goes right..
Now.. Say that there is a blue car that enters from the top (outside lane) and is driving slower than the red.. Whatever.. the red car catches up to them and is going to the left(From his original perspective), but the blue car that enters from the top is going straight through.
What am I missing here? There HAS to be something more to this that I'm not catching here, because this seems to be designed to cause carnage.
Is the blue car entering from the top, even though they are in the outside lane, supposed to wait until all traffic in all lanes is clear before entering?
this would make sense, and the road markings seem to indicate that the right lane MUST turn right.. But allowing that lane to go straight.. I don't see how this works.
If it were the traffic circles *I* drive through, the blue car can only go onto the exit directly to the right of where it entered, or else the exit halfway around the circle. It cannot go any farther around the circle than that; if the driver wanted to go more than halfway, they would have to be in the red car's lane. The red car, OTOH, can't go off that 1st exit; they have to go at least halfway around before they can exit.
The old ones were very dangerous and the new ones are far more efficient and safe.
I got used to the new systems in both Washington and in Wisconsin and there are two near my home in Irmo. I like them and hope more will replace traffic lamps soon.
Someone above said that people are not stupid because they do not know how to negotiate them... But I believe you are stupid if you live in an area where they are or are being built, but you do not take the initiative to learn how to drive them.
My personal pet peeve concerning "circles" is those people who approach them and STOP. Not another car to be seen in any of the other three directions, but people will actually stop and sit there until you get on the horn and prod them along.
If the car in the outside lane wants top go straight, but the car on the inside wants to exit, you have a conflict.
Your phrasing doesn't make a bit of sense. Here it is, in plain English:
Both cars are entering from the same entrance. The blue car in the outside lane can ONLY exit onto the first and second exits it comes to. If the blue car wants to go farther around than halfway, it has to change to the inside lane (or better yet, be smart enough to have gotten into that inner lane before even entering the circle). The red car, on the inside lane, can exit using the 2nd exit (going halfway around the circle), the third exit (going 3/4 of the way around), or all the way around, going out the same side of the circle it came in. The red car cannot use that first exit to its immediate left, because it would be cutting across the blue car's lane.
The circle I drive the most, in Latham, NY, is 2 lanes on the sections heading east and west, and one lane on the north and south sections. It's probably one of the first built in the country (1934), and it's a good 3 times the size of the ones that have been built in recent years.
I guess I was using it wrong. Going to Cape Cod, pulling our camper, entered the rotary with the plan of using 3rd exit. I entered and stayed in the outer lane (figured if I hit the inside lane with the camper, will never make it back out.....a lot of traffic), when we hit the second exit, a lady cut straight across the nose of my truck from the inside lane....had to lock up the brakes......who is at fault ?
You were in the wrong lane. She thought you were going to go out that 2nd exit. I've had idiots pull that stunt on me a lot, when I've been on the inside lane looking to use an exit that come off both the inside and inside lanes, and these people are looking to get into the circle, and think that I am continuing around, when I'm not. I've taken to flashing my brights at the cars looking to enter and giving them my "I'll WHOMP your rear end if you pull in and hit me" look. People com flying up to the entrance points and looking like they aren't going to stop.
Its not the engineers fault that people cant figure this out lol I cant believe it is even an issue lol
I've been either riding through (in the car as a kid) or driving through as an adult, the same damn traffic circle for nearly 44 years, 22 as a licensed driver. They are NO. BIG. DEAL. provided use your brain rather than sitting on it.
If a roadway requires "figuring out" or "training" then something is wrong. It's a poor design plain and simple. The whole point of a roundabout is you get on and you get off where you want to go. The two lane design requires you to think beforehand of which part of the roundabout you will exit, decide whether that qualifies as "right" or "straight" which isn't always obvious, and without seeing it from above, and then choose your entry point accordingly, then it requires changing lanes.
Even if all drivers manage to do this multi step thought process before entering the roundabout, it still creates multiple opportunities for mistakes.
Stop making excuses for bad design. It's really tiring. We see it all the time with stupid car ergonomic choices like gear levers that require thought and training. "Oh drivers are just too stupid". BAD DESIGN IS BAD DESIGN. The stupid ones are the designers who come up with bad designs.
I'd love to see you try to drive through a SPUI, since you can't seem to handle a simple traffic circle.
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