[jackpeterfletch]

In countries where they're common place and part of the licensing curriculum, roundabouts are far superior for throughput and traffic flow than any other kind of intersection of comparable size.

To get any further improvement you start having to look at junctions with over head ramps and tunnels.

[jermaustin1]

I think because the US only just started adding them, and various other intersection experiments, it will take us some time to become fully comfortable with them.

My wife's family comes from a small town outside of a small town in Louisiana and I remember when they opened the traffic circle there [1], the entire town hated it because they had never in their lives had such bad traffic, because no one knew how to use a yield sign -- stop meant stop, no sign meant yield, but now there is a new triangular stop sign, what the hell man.

Now days though, it flows amazingly, but it took close to a decade. I'm sure it will still improve over time, but now that the entire population has used it, they get it.

1: https://www.google.com/maps/@31.1609199,-93.267374,121m/data...

[michaelbuckbee]

What you're describing is my experience with them as well. My parent's town in Ohio added one [1] and there was an uproar, but it's worked surprisingly well.

It replaced a very dangerous 4 way stop/traffic light intersection that very regularly saw accidents due to the geography (hilly) and the road layout (straight into the intersection after a mile of rural road).

1 - https://goo.gl/maps/NmyMpNEqn8A2