At 12:48 PM 10/11/2002 -0700, you wrote:
>Roundabouts are becoming quite a fad in some parts of the US.
>A town near where I live is putting them in all over the place,
>apparently to save on the cost of traffic lights. An article
>in the Wall Street Journal a couple months back stated than on
>average, accident rates go up 600-700% at intersections where
>roundabouts are installed. The ones around here are usually
>less than 100 feet in diameter - and some have two lanes!
They have them all over campus here at Michigan State. They're very small
and all are two lanes. Attempting to use them as two lanes is inviting an
accident, as 95% of the people on them have no concept of how to drive on
one. As such they bottleneck down to one lane when you get to them. It's
quite the PITA and traffic lights are preferable if people don't know how
to properly negotiate the roundabout. I do, however, prefer them 10:1 over
traffic lights late at night. . .
Paul Parkanzky
Michigan State University
parkanz1@msu.edu
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