Roundabout leaves Silicon Valley geniuses perplexed
The San Francisco Bay Area is the world's premier hub for innovation, home to Silicon Valley, the richest tech moguls, and a host of billion-dollar unicorn startups. But one new feat of technological wizardry and European engineering has left this high-flying region stumped: the humble roundabout.
The city of Hollister on the outskirts of Silicon Valley unveiled its first “turbo roundabout” in February, in a nearly US$15 million effort to improve safety at a dangerous intersection. Instead, the roundabout has actually seen a spike in accidents.
The first official report on the roundabout’s performance showed that there was a crash every two and a half days on average, compared with one every eight days previously.
It seems locals are struggling to wrap their heads around how to navigate the roadway, which still counts as a new-fangled device across much of America.
As recently as 1990, the United States had just three roundabouts. While the number has since increased considerably, they are still regarded as a foreign import.
What makes the Bay Area’s roundabout problem all the more surprising is that, contrary to its name, a turbo roundabout is actually a slower version of a traditional one.
First introduced in the Netherlands in 2000, the turbo roundabout has raised barriers that divide the three lanes of traffic, a design that should slow down drivers and prevent accidents.
Wayne Wallace, who lives near the Hollister roundabout, said the most common blunder he had seen was when motorists tried to change lanes over the concrete dividers. “I’ve seen people catching air jumping over it,” he told San Jose newspaper The Mercury News.
A video posted on TikTok shows one terrifying near-miss. A black coach starts driving the wrong way, narrowly avoiding an oncoming truck and forcing a car to stop. Remarkably, the coach driver continues around the roundabout the wrong way, bringing him face to face with a column of oncoming traffic.
Anticipating that some drivers might struggle with the new installations, Caltrans, the state transport agency, produced a video explaining exactly how the roundabout works. Yet the problems persist.
Caltrans spokesman Jim Shivers insists it is too soon to draw a reliable conclusion on the roundabout’s safety, and says American drivers will get to grips with it. “People do understand how to use roundabouts in this country,” he said. “And I would say to our friends overseas – there’s a learning curve, a short one.”