Only one EV charger at home?!

Some of the residential intersections have adopted mini-roundabouts. Essentially you take a normal intersection and plant flowers in the middle. The flowers tend to have a hard life since you can't really navigate it with anything larger than a passenger car.

Most of the affected intersections were either two-way stops or no stop signs at all. On narrow residential streets where typical speeds are 25 mph or less drivers seem to have been able to work out negotiating unsigned intersections without running into each other.

Some parts of NJ have redesigned, rather than eliminated them - an example is the Allwood roundabout, in Clifton.

In the '70s I had to get a Massachusetts drivers license. Rotaries and roundabouts were very popular in that state and in studying for the written exam I was surprised to find that the only regulation was traffic must go counterclockwise. When they were jammed up completely, which was the default state around Boston, right of way was determined by testicular fortitude or, perhaps in the case of women, obliviousness to pending disaster. Having a larger, older vehicle like a '59 Cadillac with significant body damage helped.

That was apparently a study failure on your part. The rule in MA has always been that traffic already in a roundabout has the right-of-way; traffic in roteries depends on site signage, most are signed that incoming traffic must yield.

Without checking, I'm not sure when we first had roundabouts (full-size and mini) in the UK. However, with very few exceptions, the rule has always been 'priority to traffic on your right'. As we drive on the left, and circulate clockwise, this means that traffic on the roundabout has priority, and traffic on the left (entering the roundabout) must give way. [There are some rare, well-marked exceptions.]

I don't know when Continental Europe (where, like the USA, they drive on the right) adopted roundabouts, but historically, in many countries, they had a legendary 'priority to the right' rule for all road junctions. This meant that you could be hacking along a major road, and someone could come straight into your path from a side-road on the right. This meant that traffic already circulating anti-clockwise on a roundabout had to give way to traffic entering (from the right). The obvious consequence was that a busy roundabout could soon seize up solid. [I recall being obliged to drive three times around the Arc de Triomphe in Paris before being able to peal off down one of the side roads.]

In more recent years, the European 'priority to the right' rule was relaxed and replaced. On roundabouts, traffic on a roundabout now usually does have priority, and traffic joining or crossing main roads no longer are allowed to barge in from the right. However, in the absence of signs specifically indicating that the 'priority to the right' rule does not apply, 'priority to the right' is still the default situation.

We've got roundabouts at intersections that are so busy, it can take some waiting for traffic already _in_ the roundabout to clear. I've seen traffic lined up six or more cars deep and two lanes wide.

I don't mind navigating them on weekdays, when everybody on the road is a "pro". On weekends, when the working people come out to shop at Costco, it's amateur hour.

Considering the speed limit in our roundabouts is 15 mph, I don't grudge anybody doing that speed.

There is an advisory 15 mph but considering the two I have to navigate most frequently were plonked down in the middle of a 45 mph road they are a serious obstacle to traffic. To add to the clown show the street that really needed some sort of traffic control wasn't included in the rotary so now it will still have cars backed up.

They striped the rotaries last week making them even more ludicrous as they tried to create two lanes, one being a left turn in a very small diameter. They'll probably be universally ignored. One of the other rotaries does have a left hand lane that doesn't enter the rotary at all.

I can't wait to see what they do to the bike path.

The one I'm thinking of is at the intersection of two 45-mph roads. It's much less of an obstacle to traffic than the previous traffic signal was. At rush hour, you previously were guaranteed a half-mile backup at the light.

They work best where traffic density is high and all roads leading to them have approximately equal traffic.

The theory is that the rules are very simple. Give way to traffic on the roundabout. This is a lot easier than a 4 way stop.

And in light traffic they do not result in a mandatory stop either.

Used for their own sake in inappropiate locations they are crap.

Ah, the French have the best example of that in Paris. I think its called La Peripherique Interieur or something.

Prioritée à droit rules. So people have more right to get on it, than those already on it.

Naturally it is a complete clusterfuck.

I cannot remember a time without roundabouts so it must be earlier than around 1955...

DOT says 1956, but I lived on a roundaboiut as the turnaround end of a private road cul de sac from 1953, and no one went round that the 'wrong way'

Yep, BTDTGTTS. To ceate a fuckup takes a bureaucrat, To create a world class clusterfuck takes a French bureaucrat...They now work for the EU.

Which is fun when you are barrelling down a dual carriageway at 115mph and some Belgian decides to pull out on to it, and then panic and start changing lanes randomly in an effort to get out of your way. I didn't care if I passed right or left, but a weaving car presented a problem...

During some fuel crisis or other a roundabout was blocked by traffic queuing to visit a supermarket with fuel available. I couldn't get round it, so I waited, then looked at the queues preventing even a blues and twos from navigating it and noting my desired exit road was in fact empty, drove my Defender over the grassy top of it. One of the more satisfying moments of my life, and the tyre tracks lasted for weeks...

Blimey.

I overtake more cars on roundabouts than on the dual carriageways leading up to them.

It is a matter of pride to take than at around 50mph. What else is a sports saloon for? Brakes waste fuel.

The problem with mini roundabouts is their very small radius so they are very tight. Essentially a white disc is painted on a road whose kerbs are designed for a cross roads, so you need to slow to a crawl to turn very hard left to get onto the roundabout and then very hard right to go round it, and then very hard left to leave. Ok, so a lot of people drive over the painted disc, using it as a means to establish priority while still allowing you to take the normal straight-on or turn-right path that you would take at a cross roads. When the disc is painted, that it OK in the Highway Code, but some roundabouts are raised and you are supposed (somehow!) to steer round them.

Larger roundabouts are fine: they work well and (crucially) you don't have to stop completely if you can see that your way is clear; small roundabouts retro-fitted into unsuitable kerbs are a pain.

And then you have multiple roundabouts. The one in Hemel Hempstead is OK, because it is arranged predictably and logically, with a mini roundabout at each entrance to the junction, distributed around a large central roundabout that you may negotiate in either direction, using which ever is the shorter route. The "Magic Roundabout" in Swindon is a dangerous mess, because the roundabouts are plonked at random and there is no recovery route if you go the wrong way, whereas a conventional roundabout allows you to go round again if you have missed your turning. Any fool can improve road safety by forcing traffic to slow to a crawl because of confusion or tight turns; it takes skill to design a junction which causes minimal queuing and maintaining good throughput of traffic.

I used to live in Bracknell and it was said that the Transport and Road Research Laboratory in Crowthorne, nearby, used Bracknell to experiment with roundabout design. There was one roundabout (I forget which one) which was a rounded square, with a point at each entry, so if you wanted to go 3/4 round it, you had to keep moving your steering wheel back and forth to go round an island which was not a constant radius of curvature.

Anything is better than the American four-way-stop junctions. They fail badly (as far as I am concerned) for two reasons: they force everyone to stop even if there is no other traffic; they rely on *time* of arrival to determine who goes next, whereas UK junctions always use *position* (traffic on minor road gives way to traffic on major road, or traffic wanting to enter a roundabout gives way to traffic coming from the right which is already on the roundabout). The best junctions are those where everyone can agree who has priority over whom, based on position and road markings; the worst (which we mostly avoid in the UK) is a junction where everyone has equal priority and no-one has a f-ing clue who should go next. At least all (most) cross roads in the UK which don't have lights or a roundabout have a clearly defined and marked/signed major road and minor road. not a meeting of two roads of equal status which is a recipe for a free-for-all.

I was watching a driver's eye view of a car journey in the early 60s and at one roundabout the driver commented that he would go ahead and not give way to traffic from his left. Looks as if the priority-from-the-right rule at roundabouts was less well understood in those days. He made it sound as if in those days it was a matter of courtesy who went first, rather than a rule that was defined in the Highway Code.

There was a junction (Ryde seafront, on the Isle of Wight) always caught me out because I saw it as a roundabout and then had to think "on this occasion, priority from the right does *not* apply". I think it was this one

Are you sure? Even the French have realised that 'Priorité à droit' no longer works, and many junctions have a 'Vous n'avez pas priorité', or a 'Priorité à droit' sign with a red line through it. The time you really need to be careful is on the minor roads and in urban back-streets, where the dreaded 'Priorité à droit' still rules supreme.

When I drove in Massachusetts (small towns north of Boston, Boston itself, journey to/from Cape Cod) in 2000, rotaries were very rare. Normally you came off a "motorway" and the slip road ended at a T junction where you had to wait for f-ing ages until both directions were clear so you could turn left to join the traffic on the road that crossed the motorway. The only rotary that I remember was the one at the "entrance" to Cape Cod, which was a large multi-lane roundabout which was perfectly easy as long as you just did a mirror image of what you'd do in the UK: priority to traffic from the left. I tackled this without any problem and made my way along the road towards the tip of the Cape. When I stopped at a roadside cafe, a guy got out of the car behind me and came across to me: he was gobsmacked that I'd managed to go straight round the roundabout and made it look so easy. Then he heard my English accent and he said "Gee, you're not even American - you're used to driving on the other side of the road", and he virtually bowed at my feet in obeisance. ;-) "Yeah, but I'm crap at 4-way-stop junctions, so I think we'll call it quits" I replied.

I hadn't realised that there wasn't a priority-from-the-left rule defined in their equivalent of the Highway Code. Perhaps I should have been a bit more cautious and not *assumed* that traffic which wanted to join would wait for me when I was on the roundabout...

IIRC, the Arc de Triomphe (Place de l'Etoile) roundabout was sanitized about 30 years ago. Also, these days you're unlikely to find 'priority to the right' on busy roads.

I'm not sure what the French were smoking when they came up with the rule that a minor road or farm track has priority over a major road.

New Zealand and/or Australia has a rule that oncoming traffic which wants to turn right (your left) across your path into a minor road has priority over you. That is almost as bad, but at least it is visible from a distance so you can lift off the power to create a bit of space ahead of you to let it happen, whereas traffic on a French side road may be obscured by hedges/fences.

It was in force when I was there, but it was a long time ago.

Even in those days (35 years ago) most drivers didn't exercise their rights, but used common sense. This was IIRC the Belgian equivalent of a wingnut in a morris minor.

I didn't have time to examine him closely