[wonder_er]

I live in Denver - it's got the Standard American Design on every junction (every junction is a SAD junction)

There's a house near here that was written about in an article - it's at the end of a long straight road, and then there's a curve, and often-enough people go way too fast on the road, don't catch the curve, bounce through a bunch of grassy median and end up HITTING THIS HOUSE!

It's been hit so many times.

so, I really like bollards (https://josh.works/bollards) and I went to his house to see about adding some. He'd already had large rocks (1000lbs) placed in his yard, and after the most recent car hit them (and bounced one of them into his house) he added some 3000 lb rocks. It's still not a full layer of protection, but it's better.

Anyway, the real danger is the junction, not him having good enough or not good enough bollards. So, there was a meeting at his house the next day with city traffic engineering staff, police, city council, lots of neighbors...

and I'm popularizing a fix that I'm calling 'the traffic bean' - it's a shared-space junction, that is as effective as the existing junction, and much, much safer:

https://josh.works/traffic-bean

The director of Denver's DOTI has been looking it over, as a city council person has been pushing for it to get approved, and it might get approved! This would be basically the first real improvement in how american junctions are designed in decades.

It's currently just my side-project wish. All I want is to live near and use a road network that doesn't deal death constantly to others.

i fear for my kid's life, the same way these kids lives were affected. American road networks are horrific, I cannot take seriously anyone who takes them seriously.

[drcongo]

There's a couple of these in Bodmin [0], Cornwall that I've driven through a few times. It used to be traffic lights and was constant jams at each junction. I'd never seen one before when they first changed it, I approached cautiously, drove onto it cautiously, and exited pretty impressed. I do wonder what less considerate drivers are like on it though. Local residents apparently complain about it [1], but then it seems to be part of the British psyche to complain about anything new and different, especially if it's done by your local council.

[0] https://maps.app.goo.gl/LQ9kSNZxQwYV8S9C9

[1] https://www.cornwalllive.com/news/cornwall-news/bodmin-round...

[alistairSH]

As somebody who has visited and driven around the UK quite a few times, I would assume that was a roundabout and treat it as such. Other than the lack of blue roundabout traffic sign, it looks just like one of many other roundabouts.

Or, put another way, why is it shaped like a circle, and not just a normal 4-way uncontrolled intersection?

[drcongo]

Well, until today and reading the parent's blog posts I hadn't actually realised it wasn't a roundabout, and in use, it seems everyone kinda behaves like it is anyway. It's certainly an improvement on what was there before though.

[nmeofthestate]

It used to be a roundabout and now everyone treats it as a roundabout, and it's an improvement - I'm somewhat baffled.

[drcongo]

No, it used to be traffic lights with long queues at each entrance. I mentioned that in my original post.

[nmeofthestate]

Okay. In the streetview imagery it's a traditional roundabout with no lights, but from the map view it's... weird looking. Maybe they have changed to a normal roundabout, or the tried a normal roundabout for a bit instead of lights, and then went with the new round thing...

[wonder_er]

wow! Thanks for this link to the junction in Bodmin! I didn't know there were more. I'll save this and add it to the traffic bean post.

Indeed, the junction can be a bit unfamiliar, and it looks like the one in Bodmin could be less confusing - I think delinieating the inner space and keeping cars to the edges (to make it more of an actual roundabout) would improve things for everyone.

Maybe I should call it a 'traffic doughnut' to highlight the difference between the inner/outer space of the junction.

American road networks were designed to be impervious to the opinions of everyone who uses them, so I'm very pleased with myself to have gotten so close to the permission I need to do a novel junction design.

[nmeofthestate]

It looks like a small roundabout? (I'm guessing the google streetview imagery is out of date and it used to just be a roundabout).

[nmeofthestate]

It's not at all clear to me how this "traffic bean" works from looking at the linked page.

Is it just a free-for-all zone that makes drivers slow down due to being confused? This seems to be a philosophy that's gaining ground - make no-rules areas and cars will be forced to slow down to navigate the zone, and this makes things safer (I'm skeptical about that bit).

[tim333]

The house two down from my mums kept having cars crash through the garden wall and into the garden. They fixed it with speed bumps and a junction redesign as two mini roundabouts. View of them from near where the crashes were https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Sun+Ln,+Harpenden+AL5+4H...

before it was just a crossroads. The tree in the road wasn't there - you could blast straight through if you didn't crash. Must have reduced crashes 10x.

[alistairSH]

Is that effectively a double roundabout/traffic circle? I'm not sure I intuitively understand how to navigate the bit of the "bean" that's round but doesn't have a central circle to flow around? [I'm totally fine with UK-style traffic circles, single, double, multi-lane, etc]

[wonder_er]

the junction in it's current form is like a wild, light-controlled, two-or-three lane hybrid between a roundabout and a standard junction.

If you can do UK-style traffic circles, you'd be fine on this junction.

My proposal to to shape down all inbound lanes of traffic to a single lane, then connect them all to the inner circulating channel - it's a little lumpy, thus 'bean shaped' instead of 'circle shaped'.

But as far as using it, from the POV of the driver of a vehicle, it's identical to a roundabout.