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by throwway120385 617 days ago
I like 4-way stops as a pedestrian because I can actually cross the road there. With roundabouts it's impossible to cross without asking really nicely or risking my life. US drivers do not stop for pedestrians so crossing that kind of infrastructure is often taking your life into your hands.
2 comments

This can easily be solved with a camera. Not yielding to a pedestrian = instant fine.
Roundabouts should have only 1 direction you need to look at to cross. You don't have to watch 3-4 different directions like at a 4way stop.

That said, if there's a huge bias towards cars coming from one direction (or out one direction), that can be very difficult to cross. And it has impacts on the roundabout's throughput too, and means that a roundabout might not be the most ideal. Similarly to how a roundabout that gets backedup into can fail catastrophically (you have to make sure there's negative pressure!)

> It has impacts on the roundabout's throughput too

For these use cases there's the turbo roundabout[0]. Depending on how you design it you can give certain directions slightly more priority, though they don't solve the pedestrian issue either.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundabout#Turbo_roundabouts