this post was submitted on 16 May 2025
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If the crosswalk is designed properly, a car approaching a traffic circle should only need to look at traffic, because the crosswalk would be well in front of the traffic circle. Once you pass the crosswalk, there only reason to stop is if there's a car in the way.
That's the great thing about traffic circles, they reduce the sensory input so drivers only need to worry about one thing at a time. At a regular intersection, you need to worry about pedestrians and potentially cars coming from two directions.
The safest thing to do at a traffic circle is enter and exit as efficiently as possible. If you stop unnecessarily, it'll take longer to get your car moving (increasing accident risk in the circle) and potentially cause backups in other intersections behind you.
Most of the roundabouts near me have the crosswalks right up by the circle, so you'd have to either stop on top of the crosswalk, or stop with it in front of you. If you stopped with the crosswalk behind you, you'd be in the circle.
And I do look at the circle ahead of time and will go if it is clear, but if it isn't then I do stop, and it happens to take me longer to make a decision as to when I am good to go than most other people.
If I didn't live in freedumb land, I wouldn't drive, but driving is the only reliable option here.
Yeah, US infrastructure is pretty crappy, I live here too. Traffic circles, when they exist, are poorly implemented and in stupid places.
One super annoying one is about 100ft from a traffic light, and the traffic always gets backed up into the circle. If that intersection was also a traffic circle it wouldn't be an issue. But it's right next to two high traffic stores (Walmart and Home Depot), and is the best way to get to several others, so it's always stuck.
The rest are really far from traffic, so there's not enough traffic to actually get much benefit. Yet people still screw them up.
We really need to double down and put traffic circles in important areas so people learn to use them. Instead, we hide them away and put them in stupid spots.