Our local rag pushed a tweet out about a new traffic/intersection control called a Roundabout. They went on and on, just the same as MDOT did about all the studies indicating that these new traffic control systems were safer than anything else currently in use on the roads. I remember that when MDOT was pushing roundabouts and opened up for public comment I threw in my two cents. I maintain that while roundabouts are most certainly safer, they are only that way when everyone is properly educated on how to use them. Another point I made is if people have a problem with classic intersections, how will they cope with these wholly new experiences?

From the rag:

“…Like this email from reader, Katrina, who wrote:

I was wondering if you could please tell people how to use a roundabout! I have, on more than one occasion, watched someone go in circles again and again, trying to figure out how to get out! Please explain this to people! Thank you!

Or this email from reader, Connie, who wrote:

Who has the right of way in our new turn abouts? I have been told the person to your left has the right of way. Is it possible to post a sign saying who has the right of way? Sometimes both of you sit and wait until someone gives the OK to keep moving.”

So we have a state where the driving acumen is already deeply suspect: outrageous speeds, total ignorance of directionals, and starvation-until-death at a locked 4-way stop intersection. We are asking these people, who are already pushed to their limits by simple things like the odd thing on the left of their driving column that they never touch to the aforementioned “everyone died because they were locked solid at a 4-way” to somehow just be thrown headlong into a roundabout! Now instead of a simple 4-way lock we’ll have an internal roundabout lock joined to a accessway/exit lock on top of that!

What I’m getting at is that MDOT and these studies never took into account that people are grossly untrained for using roundabouts. Yes, they may be safer, and proven such when studies are conducted in places where people were trained on how to successfully navigate a roundabout, but this is Michigan! I am terrified of roundabouts and I try to avoid them if at all possible, not because I doubt my own wits or knowledge of how to use them, but because I’m surrounded by people who haven’t a clue how roundabouts work!

In the end all of this is meaningless. MDOT pushed hard and got permission to introduce these new car-destroying traps to this state, and now we have to cope with the ramifications of their actions. MDOT has a website that has educational material on roundabouts, but after working in academia, and seeing the things I’ve seen, even looking out my office window, people aren’t going to visit that website, and even if they do, I doubt they’ll learn anything.

At least we all were safer when Michiganders were trapped in their cars and starved to death at 4-way intersections. Nobody was hurt, they just died of natural causes. In roundabouts, now we can add fiery maelstroms of destruction to the body count.

“I don’t drive, the people on the roads are lunatics.” 🙂