Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by jccalhoun 828 days ago
I can't imagine how people in my midwestern USA state would react to this. My small college shares an entrance with a middle school and they put a roundabout in a couple years ago. Except when parents are picking up or dropping off their kids it is very low traffic with very clear visibility. I still see people regularly not know how to use it. People stopping in the middle of it to let people in and stopping at the yield sign when it is obvious that there is no other car anywhere near it.
3 comments

There's a certain familiarity factor to using roundabouts and add to that the need for a certain level of trust that other people aren't going to do something stupid. As I wrote elsewhere, there's a clear difference at a busy roundabout I'm familiar with when school gets back in and there are presumably a lot of parents driving it who aren't familiar with it given that big roundabouts in particular aren't common around where I live.
> I can't imagine how people in my midwestern USA state would react to this.

Abject horror. It’s an Eldritch monster as imagined by a civil engineer. A roundabout like that would turn me into a misanthropic agoraphobe, never to see the light of day outside the safety of my own abode ever again.

probably something like this: https://youtu.be/9TnGjq9mWSI?t=235

(this is tounge-in-cheek, but some people in the UK do genuinely find double mini-roundabouts terrifying)