Terrific thread with many, many great observations, comments, etc. I first became aware of roundabouts when I lived in the UK in the late 50's. My AF dad was stationed there. I was in the 5th-6th grade, but I thought they were pretty neat.
Last Nov my wife and I moved to St Clair County, IL just across the river from St Louis (Belleville/Fairview Heights/Shiloh/O'Fallon) to be close to our daughter and her family. Just within the past year and a half a lot of 4 way stops were converted to roundabouts in O'Fallon. Most were In well travelled, but not densely populated areas (fairly new subdivisions separated by farm fields) Our daughter said daily traffic was severely impacted by the construction because there weren't nearby roads that could be used as alternate routes.
The house we bought has 6 roundabouts within 10 minutes of us. One is in the middle of our subdivision, one at the entrance to our subdivision, one east, one west, and two south. The two in our subdivision are unavoidable, as well as the ones east and west. The two south of us could be avoided, but are actually very convenient for getting to downtown O'Fallon.
I love them and what i have observed in 4 months has been mentioned on this thread. People who are not familiar with them are confused, some always STOP at the entrance, even if no one is in the circle, some just barrel through without slowing down, even if someone has entered the circle before them, and using TURN SIGNALS to signal where you are exiting the loop are VERY IMPORTANT.
Using turn signals in a roundabout is actually a traffic regulation in IL and a driver can be given a ticket for not signaling if a cop sees it. If even MOST drivers would use turn signals in a roundabout it would REALLY speed things up, but sadly, most drivers in St Clair County, IL do NOT use them. But other than that, I find them quite beneficial to traffic flow, at least in less densely populated areas where there is room to install them.
Edit: HumpitPuryear made an excellent post that I totally agree with:
Quote:
You have to pay attention to what you and other drivers are doing to merge in an out of traffic and exit the roundabout.
P
aying attention to what other drivers are doing is really the key to the whole business. I quickly learned that when we first moved here. I had to greatly notch up my "attention level".