Video of 'Muricans and a round-a-bout

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linuxrocks
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Video of 'Muricans and a round-a-bout

Post by linuxrocks »

They call this a mini-roundabout. I assume if they encountered a proper mini-roundabout, they would do what so many do here in Blighty, treat it as a bump in the road.

https://www.facebook.com/10205987449710 ... 3852647082

The drivers are coping better now. Not sure what the bloke is doing walking on the median strip.

https://www.facebook.com/10205987449710 ... 0328911831
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Bryn666
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Re: Video of 'Muricans and a round-a-bout

Post by Bryn666 »

linuxrocks wrote: Tue Apr 27, 2021 12:52 They call this a mini-roundabout. I assume if they encountered a proper mini-roundabout, they would do what so many do here in Blighty, treat it as a bump in the road.

https://www.facebook.com/10205987449710 ... 3852647082

The drivers are coping better now. Not sure what the bloke is doing walking on the median strip.

https://www.facebook.com/10205987449710 ... 0328911831
It's basically a Dutch roundabout with the 90 degree entries and narrow approach lanes. The mistake they made was assuming the average country bumpkin in rural Kentucky can cope with an intersection - they're generally regarded as horrendous drivers.
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Re: Video of 'Muricans and a round-a-bout

Post by Peter Freeman »

If you actually read what the site says, you'll see that the first video was not of stupid drivers doing the wrong thing. It was made during a staged opening of the roundabout's arms.
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Re: Video of 'Muricans and a round-a-bout

Post by M19 »

The first video is definitely staged.

The second looks more finished with blacktop and needs marking.

It’s not a Dutch roundabout design. It’s a compact single lane entry. A Dutch roundabout has outer concave edges between entry and exit points to slow traffic more and then has cycle infrastructure around it with crossings.

For multiple lane roundabouts there is an interesting US study on roundabout design concerning entry angles and reveals what we’re doing wrong with designs in the UK that encourages entry path overlap. https://www.ltrc.lsu.edu/ltc_13/pdf/pre ... TC2013.pdf
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Re: Video of 'Muricans and a round-a-bout

Post by WHBM »

Much overstated

I've known this one in Florida for many years. Nobody seems to have an issue with it. Though I do feel it could do with some UK-style signage

https://www.google.com/maps/@27.9894168 ... 384!8i8192
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Re: Video of 'Muricans and a round-a-bout

Post by jgharston »

M19 wrote: Mon May 03, 2021 22:47 For multiple lane roundabouts there is an interesting US study on roundabout design concerning entry angles and reveals what we’re doing wrong with designs in the UK that encourages entry path overlap. https://www.ltrc.lsu.edu/ltc_13/pdf/pre ... TC2013.pdf
That's a very good presentation, and it seems US highway engineers are catching up to where we'd got a couple of decades ago - but we seem to be dropping back. The new Eden Camp roundabout on the A169 north of Malton seems to have taken the offset roundabout concept past the extreme use usefulness.

I know the road and so when heading north I remind myself what's coming up, but I still keep finding myself with the wrong combination of speed and angle entering the roundabout. Looking at the aerial view after reading the US presentation I realise why - the entry lane is pointing directly at the centre circle! Whatever speed you enter from the south you have to do a last-minute jerk to the left to align up with the roundabout carriageway. Using advice in the presentation it could be improved with paint by marking out the Eden Camp turnoff to the left as a seperate lane.

Image

Even though the roundabout is the width of two un-marked lanes, you can see at the 3 o'clock position that southbound traffic just goes in a straight line ignoring the curve - again, due to the angle of the approach lane.

Edit: hmmm.... my image doesn't appear to be appearing.
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Stevie D
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Re: Video of 'Muricans and a round-a-bout

Post by Stevie D »

jgharston wrote: Wed May 05, 2021 15:46That's a very good presentation, and it seems US highway engineers are catching up to where we'd got a couple of decades ago - but we seem to be dropping back. The new Eden Camp roundabout on the A169 north of Malton seems to have taken the offset roundabout concept past the extreme use usefulness.

I know the road and so when heading north I remind myself what's coming up, but I still keep finding myself with the wrong combination of speed and angle entering the roundabout. Looking at the aerial view after reading the US presentation I realise why - the entry lane is pointing directly at the centre circle! Whatever speed you enter from the south you have to do a last-minute jerk to the left to align up with the roundabout carriageway. Using advice in the presentation it could be improved with paint by marking out the Eden Camp turnoff to the left as a seperate lane.

Even though the roundabout is the width of two un-marked lanes, you can see at the 3 o'clock position that southbound traffic just goes in a straight line ignoring the curve - again, due to the angle of the approach lane.
The current fetish for offset roundabouts seems to be, as far as I can tell, around minimising the cost of construction, by minimising and simplifying additional land purchase (ie, it's easier to buy a big bit of one field from one landowner than a small bit of three fields from three separate landowners) and by allowing more of the carriageway to be built offline with less disruption to the existing road during construction. As with so many things, we're getting substandard outputs because we're cutting costs.

The roundabout at Eden Camp is so typical of the problems of bad design. What is the point of a 15m left-turn lane there? It does nothing for capacity, despite whatever nonsense the computer modellers might say, and it just confuses the issue by directing drivers to take a more awkward path through the junction and potentially misleading other drivers if they take a sensible path ignoring the white lines. For roundabouts like this, we need to embrace the single lane entry and single lane circulation, and stop mucking about adding lanes that do nothing but make everything worse.

(PS, I think your image wasn't showing because it's on an http server and not https, and because Sabre is on https it won't show non-secure elements within the page)
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Re: Video of 'Muricans and a round-a-bout

Post by jgharston »

Stevie D wrote: Wed May 05, 2021 20:15 The roundabout at Eden Camp is so typical of the problems of bad design. What is the point of a 15m left-turn lane there? It does nothing for capacity, despite whatever nonsense the computer modellers might say, and it just confuses the issue by directing drivers to take a more awkward path through the junction and potentially misleading other drivers if they take a sensible path ignoring the white lines. For roundabouts like this, we need to embrace the single lane entry and single lane circulation, and stop mucking about adding lanes that do nothing but make everything worse.
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Re: Video of 'Muricans and a round-a-bout

Post by bothar »

Apparently, Carmel, Indiana is a big adopter of roundabouts. These videos are from the NY Times, they have clearly done a reasonable job and have some nice landscaping that local authorities in these islands would not bother with.

https://vp.nyt.com/video/2021/10/26/967 ... g_720p.mp4

https://vp.nyt.com/video/2021/10/26/967 ... g_720p.mp4

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2021/10 ... rJumbo.jpg

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2021/11 ... &auto=webp
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Gareth
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Re: Video of 'Muricans and a round-a-bout

Post by Gareth »

The US road markings for multilane roundabouts are far more intuitive than ours, in my humble opinion.
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Re: Video of 'Muricans and a round-a-bout

Post by Peter Freeman »

jgharston wrote: Wed May 05, 2021 15:46 Even though the roundabout is the width of two un-marked lanes, you can see at the 3 o'clock position that southbound traffic just goes in a straight line ignoring the curve - again, due to the angle of the approach lane.
Not so much the roundabout's fault - just the lazy (or habitual) way that many drivers generally straight-line roundabouts, take them too fast, and cut back to the left at exits (even at 2-lane exits, ignoring white lines).
Last edited by Peter Freeman on Tue Nov 30, 2021 05:04, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Video of 'Muricans and a round-a-bout

Post by Peter Freeman »

M19 wrote: Mon May 03, 2021 22:47 The first video is definitely staged.
The second looks more finished with blacktop and needs marking.
My original statement "It was made during a staged opening of the roundabout's arms" didn't mean 'a setup' or 'faked'. It meant opening the arms sequentially. IIRC, that's what the accompanying text stated.
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