Traffic Roundabouts Present Steep Learning Curves for Some Localities
A screenshot from a roundabout educational video. Sarasota County / YouTube
Watch some of the how-to videos aimed at helping baffled motorists.
In some parts of the country, navigating a roundabout is a simple maneuver for motorists. They’re designed to be efficient and safer than a traditional signal-controlled intersection. Roundabouts are more environmentally friendly, too, since they help eliminate cars waiting for red lights.
But as more local jurisdictions around the nation reconstruct traditional intersections as roundabouts, there’s a big problem: Some drivers simply don’t understand them.
“We still struggle to educate motorists with how to properly use a roundabout,” Craig Bryson, spokesman for the road commission for Michigan’s Oakland County, told The Oakland Press late last week. “We had hoped the learning curve would be quicker, I guess. But it is a learning curve. It takes some time.”
In Oakland County, just outside Detroit, some roundabouts have seen big spikes in crashes and property damage since they were built, The Oakland Press reported. But the severity of those accidents has been limited due to a roundabout’s slow-speed design.
A roundabout education video produced for Oakland County is now being used in Sarasota County, Florida, to help unfamiliar drivers there figure out how to navigate reconfigured road junctions there. Recently, the Texas Department of Transportation and El Paso County, Colorado, released new roundabout educational videos.
But sometimes, videos just won’t cut it.
This spring, the Minnesota Department of Transportation hosted a roundabout educational outreach effort at a shopping mall in Mankato.
As the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported at the time:
A large rubber mat with lane markings and signs leading up to and inside a roundabout allowed people to walk through the movements they would make if they were driving a car. A table model with Matchbox cars to push around was also on hand.
“I was chatting with a lady who said she never goes to the inside lane for fear of getting stuck,” said MnDOT traffic engineer Scott Thompson. “The joke is Clark Griswold in ‘European Vacation’ getting stuck in a roundabout, but you can always get out.
Roundabout confusion isn’t just a problem for some U.S. motorists. Japan has experienced similar problems with the implementation of roundabouts as part of a pilot project.
And just be fortunate that none of the new U.S. roundabouts is as confusing as the so-called “Magic Roundabout” in Swindon, England.
Watch some of the recent roundabout educational videos ...