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26th April 2021, 12:25 PM | #1 |
Penultimate Amazing
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Kentucky drivers meet traffic circle
Kentucky drivers fail to grasp the concept of a new traffic circle:
https://slate.com/business/2021/04/r...nfounding.html |
26th April 2021, 12:28 PM | #2 |
Philosopher
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They installed several a few years ago where I live. They took some getting used to
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26th April 2021, 12:34 PM | #3 |
Penultimate Amazing
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26th April 2021, 12:36 PM | #4 |
Penultimate Amazing
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Technically that's, more specifically, a "modern roundabout" a better form of traffic circle than most traffic circles in the US.
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26th April 2021, 12:53 PM | #5 |
Penultimate Amazing
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Seemed fine to me, other than the complete lack of appropriate road markings to help drivers. Everyone who entered the circle at the correct entry point handled it correctly. The only people who had trouble were the ones who misread the unmarked roadway and entered the circle at the wrong point. And even then, everybody figured it out and got on the right track pretty quick without any collisions.
This isn't a "Kentucky drivers meet traffic circles". This is a "Kentucky drivers need to elect better transportation commissioners." |
26th April 2021, 12:55 PM | #6 |
The Clarity Is Devastating
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It looks like they're calling it morning, driving through the sound of in and out the valley.
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26th April 2021, 12:56 PM | #7 |
Penultimate Amazing
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There was a traffic circle near my apartment in S. Carolina, one of the very few in the state. My now wife encountered people driving down these the wrong way on two separate occasions.
It was a two lane rotary. Despite the extremely angled on ramps that point your car into the correct flow of traffic and big concrete curbs to prevent the free for all shown in the video, people would still manage to turn left and get into the inside lane (the right side of the road) driving the wrong way. There are a lot of US drivers who have never encountered these before and honestly have no idea what they are. It's a hard thing to introduce in a world where 4 way stops are king. You can't really build these here unless you expend a lot of road paint and build up curbs that make doing the wrong thing extremely difficult, and even then there's going to be screwups. |
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26th April 2021, 12:57 PM | #8 |
Penultimate Amazing
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26th April 2021, 12:58 PM | #9 |
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Also I wonder how much Slate is paying their intern to link a tweet and do ten minutes' worth of investigoogling on related topics. And I wonder how many people mistake the result for "journalism".
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26th April 2021, 12:58 PM | #10 |
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26th April 2021, 01:01 PM | #11 |
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26th April 2021, 01:11 PM | #12 |
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26th April 2021, 01:12 PM | #13 |
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That's just a ways down RT60 (@ 60 & 801) from Moebobs cousin. We've been down that way a couple of times.
ETA: See if I can get the lowdown for them down yonder. |
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26th April 2021, 01:16 PM | #14 |
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26th April 2021, 01:18 PM | #15 |
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26th April 2021, 01:24 PM | #16 |
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At first I was wondering why they were cutting left as if that was a one way road leading in. It ain't, so why the heck would you suddenly go to the left of a median? Perhaps thinking of it more like a small cloverleaf on a motorway but not realizing opposing traffic comes out that way.
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26th April 2021, 01:25 PM | #17 |
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26th April 2021, 01:30 PM | #18 |
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26th April 2021, 01:34 PM | #19 |
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26th April 2021, 01:35 PM | #20 |
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OK, but didn't seem any worse than New York (anywhere), DC, Philadelphia or Phoenix when we were in that area. Dallas/Fort Worth seemed to keep traffic well separated (like Philly does a bit) but man oh man whatever it takes they just wanna be that one car ahead.
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26th April 2021, 01:41 PM | #21 |
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My own Pennsetucky stepfather, when meeting his first New Jersey traffic circle, took his Jeep CJ-7 directly across the middle of the grass-centered circle like it was a straightaway.
In unsurprising other news, he is a Trump supporter. |
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26th April 2021, 01:53 PM | #22 |
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They're adding a lot of roundabouts here. I really don't understand how it isn't obvious how to negotiate them. You should at least have some sense of which side of the road you need to end up on.
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26th April 2021, 02:04 PM | #23 |
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In fairness, I came upon one unexpectedly at night, on an unfamiliar stretch of road, must have missed the "circle" sign that heralds one coming up. Because of the angle of my approach, the first drivable road I saw was the left of the circle, which made it look like the road was sharply bending left. I worked out what was going on in time, but I can see a bad thing happening to someone who wasn't familiar with them hitting one for the first time.
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26th April 2021, 02:06 PM | #24 |
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They seem to be making the best of it.
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26th April 2021, 02:27 PM | #25 |
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26th April 2021, 02:34 PM | #26 |
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I live in Milton Keynes UK, place is made of roundabouts.
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26th April 2021, 02:40 PM | #27 |
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26th April 2021, 02:42 PM | #28 |
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26th April 2021, 02:44 PM | #29 |
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26th April 2021, 03:28 PM | #30 |
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NJ removed all their high volume traffic circles. They were old in design and overwhelmed with more traffic than they could handle. They caused a lot of accidents, partly because of NJ’s poor rules regarding right of way and partly because of the sheer number of cars needing to go through them.
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26th April 2021, 03:47 PM | #31 |
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26th April 2021, 04:03 PM | #32 |
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If they avoided collisions, it was largely because nobody was coming the other way. Many passed off screen before we could know when they corrected their wrong lanes.
I think it was a bad idea to divide the highway before it met the circle, since the main problem seems to be that drivers presumed the division was a fork rather than a lane divider, and took the left lane, and then proceeded wrong way down the cross street. Hereabouts there have been many traffic circles appearing recently and most of the time they work pretty well, and do indeed work better than lighted or four way stop intersections. But the roadway remains two lane right to the circle, and there are prominent arrow markers on the circle itself. All the arrows point to the right, of course, so it would take a pretty dumb driver to go to the left, and it's abundantly clear on an undivided highway that one does not suddenly veer into the left lane. There still is some confusion, though, mostly owing to right of way rules. The right of way at an intersection belongs to the person on the right, and this is, officially, true even in a traffic circle, except that every such circle operates as an exception. I actually got this question wrong on a driver's test long ago, assuming that the rule for circles was in the code. But at least in Connecticut in the 1970's it was not, and presumably if you don't see a "yield" sign, you can blast right through and make the car on the left stop within the circle, thus obviating the whole purpose of it. |
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26th April 2021, 04:14 PM | #33 |
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I saw the video before and assumed it's from some 3rd world country ..
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26th April 2021, 04:14 PM | #34 |
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Like many humorless and indignant people, he is hard on everybody but himself, and does not perceive it when he fails his own ideal (Molière) A pedant is a man who studies a vacuum through instruments that allow him to draw cross-sections of the details (John Ciardi) |
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26th April 2021, 04:20 PM | #35 |
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Roundabouts have become ubiquitous here in Wisconsin, or at least the south eastern part where the majority of us Badger State residents live. I have to admit to being against them when they first started popping up about 15 years ago, but I've come around to embracing them. I like the fact I don't have to come to a complete stop, as one can usually time the traffic to be able to roll through at about 10 to 15 mph. There can be a bit of overkill, however, when they have roundabouts placed too close together, such as at Interstate interchanges, with frontage roads on both sides, and roundabouts for all 4 junctions.
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26th April 2021, 04:29 PM | #36 |
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Yep, before there were three lanes going into the intersection on either direction of the main road (RT60). The right turn/straight lane, the left turn lane and the opposing traffic lane. With the divider now taking up the space for one of those lanes people might just be used to the splitting of the lanes for the right turn/straight lane and the left turn lane. Though that, leaving no lane for opposing traffic one has to wonder how they figure opposing traffic gets through?
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26th April 2021, 05:05 PM | #37 |
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26th April 2021, 05:27 PM | #38 |
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It looks like one person did it wrong and a bunch of people followed suit.
They're putting a roundabout in my neighborhood. I love roundabouts and welcome it, but there's a lot of people who think it's going to bring about the apocalypse. |
26th April 2021, 07:38 PM | #39 |
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They put a small roundabout near my parents' place in Corvallis maybe five years back; and it's pretty terrible to drive through during rush hour or other times of heavy traffic. The issues are that 1) Oregonian drivers are too lazy to use turn signals, and 2) the roundabout is small enough that there's barely a split second's difference or warning between a car exiting off the roundabout or blocking an entrance as they drive past.
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26th April 2021, 07:46 PM | #40 |
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