kanner@tymix.UUCP (Herb Kanner) (11/15/84)
The long series of Re: Traffic Circles articles, every one of which says something like: "Traffic circles are a pain in the ---", inspires me to throw in a final word on the subject. I agree, in the various United States, and, I assume, in Canada, they probably are a pain in the butt, because a) the rules are not consistent, b) they are usually the wrong rules anyway, and c) none of the drivers know what the rules are supposed to be, so a) and b) are irrelevant. Well, seven and a half years of driving in Great Britain convinced me that their "roundabouts" are the greatest invention since the wheel. They replace a helluva lot of traffic lights. You find them in every urban center larger than a village; also at all significant highway interchanges. No one gets a driving license in Great Britain without demonstrating a knowledge of the roundabout rules. With all drivers understanding how to negotiate them, they appear to work well even at times of heavy traffic. I never witnessed an accident at a roundabout. The traffic throughput is obviously greater than it would be were the roundabout to be replaced by conventional traffic light control. Human nature being what it is, the inevitable happened, and some lame-brained bureaucrats in the Ministry of Transport invented the "mini-roundabout". Imagine, if you will, five or six roads converging into a fairly large, ill-defined paved area perhaps fifty feet in diameter. Now further imagine that some fool has taken a can of white paint and laid down a ten foot circle plumb smack in the middle of this area and declared the circle to be the impenetrable center of a roundabout. This one probably does produce accidents, because you wind up with two kinds of drivers: the ones who attempt to apply the normal roundabout rules to this abomination, and the ones who say the hell with it and head by the most direct route to their destination. Herb Kanner Tymnet, Inc. Cupertino