[Auracle]

My experience driving in rural France was that nearly every intersection was a roundabout and it slowed things down dramatically. Many, many times I was the only driver within sight. Surely one of the two directions is more used and a couple of putting stop signs the other way would make more sense.

Roundabouts are great sometimes, but they aren’t a magic bullet.

That said we have a nasty intersection in the area on a highway that they’re going to redo, which absolutely no one could have foreseen 10 years ago when they first put it in.

The 3 options were j-turn or roundabout soon, or a full on overpass type system in another 10 years.

J-turns are awful, so while that was their first idea it was thankfully put down. It would have been even worse as it leads into a school and most buses in the area would have needed to do U-turns on the highway, as well as new teen drivers. In Minnesota.

Old people complained about roundabouts because even though they’re used quite a bit in the area apparently they don’t drive and don’t understand them.

So, 10+ million dollar overpass for a town of 2,000 it is, in 10 years. Let’s hope not too many more people die before then, eh?

[bluecalm]

That it slows things down significantly is a feature not a bug. Rural roads have a lot of accidents. In my country the most fatal ones. There are two main reasons for that: speeding and fail to yield. Often combination of the two. Roundabouts solve the issue as you have to slow down before the intersection.

[fransje26]

> My experience driving in rural France was that nearly every intersection was a roundabout and it slowed things down dramatically. [..] Surely one of the two directions is more used and a couple of putting stop signs the other way would make more sense.

Yes, that is by design. Slowing traffic down, also in relatively low-traffic areas, is one of the use-cases for roundabouts in France. Mostly around villages and/or industrial areas.

[DrBazza]

Try driving in England, rural or otherwise, and you'll see our current trend of adding traffic lights to roundabouts.

If you think roundabouts slow you down (they don't really), just wait until non-rush hour at one of these "roundabouts" when you're the only car waiting on several sets of red lights, or during rush hour when the lights have failed and it's totally gridlocked where traffic simply cannot pass.

[ndsipa_pomu]

To be fair, most of the gridlocked traffic is caused by drivers not understanding that they shouldn't enter a yellow box junction until their exit is clear and similarly, they shouldn't be nosing out onto a roundabout when their lane is already full - that's what tends to cause the issues.

[DrBazza]

True. It's in the Highway Code. Then again, so is 'move quickly past the vehicle you are overtaking, once you have started to overtake. Allow plenty of room. Move back to the left as soon as you can but do not cut in'. But you wouldn't know it driving on UK motorways.

[ndsipa_pomu]

There's a special ring of hell reserved for drivers that stay in the middle lane.