Embracing the roundabout cuts crashes, helps save lives
Public and drivers need better education on benefits, writes Lorraine Sommerfeld.
Not to alarm you, but you’re probably roundabout-ing all wrong.
Maybe they freak you out a little, maybe you experience them infrequently enough to really get the hang of it, but I’m about to give you advice from an actual Roundabout Specialist — an engineer who specializes in roundabout design.
Though Canada now has between 300 and 400 roundabouts, my introduction to them happened half a world away when I was a kid. Trapped in the back seat of a tiny rental car with my two sisters, we watched in terror as my father got stuck in a swirling sea of traffic in London, England.
Picture a jet-lagged man about to spend two weeks with his wife’s “nattering family”
(his words) piloting a standard transmission car with the steering wheel on the right, the gear shifter on the left and all the traffic going the wrong way. Now, enter a multi-lane roundabout crammed with “buses and cabs and idiots” (also his words).
We eventually got out, but it was a very Chevy Chase European Vacation moment. Several of them, in fact. It was also when I learned that the beauty of roundabouts is that you can keep going around … and round … and round. If you miss your exit, no big deal. It’ll be coming right up again. And again.
While the concept of the free-flowing circular intersection is admittedly confusing for the unprepared or unpractised, it’s a traffic device we would be smart to start allocating more thought and money to. The increased safety statistics alone are staggering: a 76 per cent reduction in injury-causing crashes when compared to a two-way stop or traffic-signal control, according to a 2001 study by the U.S. Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS).
It shows “reductions of 38 per cent for all crash severities combined and of 76 per cent for all injury crashes. Reductions in the numbers of fatal and incapacitating injury crashes were estimated at about 90 per cent.”
Similar studies around the world echo those numbers. If we could control the speed of every intersection, and remove head-on and left-turn crashes, we could eliminate one of the most dangerous problems on our roads.
According to Phil Weber, an engineer and roundabout specialist with CIMA+, we need to do a better job on two fronts: educating the public on those huge safety gains, and educating drivers on how to properly use multi-lane roundabouts.
Our roundabouts are the same as those in the U.S. and the U.K.: an intersection with a central island in the middle. That island usually has banked sides — an apron — that larger trucks frequently need to negotiate their turns in smaller roundabouts.
One of the built-in beauties of roundabouts is how they control speed. When you control the speed, you control the safety. Picture a traditional signalled intersection. Drivers may speed up to make a green, or to jam an amber. You can’t speed into a roundabout. Everybody’s speed is held in check.
“Single-lane roundabouts are easy: slow down, look to your left, wait for a gap, enter and advance to your exit,” says Weber. It’s when you start adding lanes that things can get complicated, but as he explains, with a little practice and some straightforward direction, it’s easy to get the hang of it.
“A good rule of thumb: For destinations less than halfway around (i.e. a right turn) use the right entry lane; for destinations more than halfway around (i.e. a left turn) use the left entry lane. Usually if you’re going through the intersection you can use either lane, but each intersection may be different, so always check the signs so you get in the correct lane.”