I wish all stop signs would be replaced with roundabouts, or mini roundabouts like those in the UK. Stop signs are wildly time inefficient, less gas efficient, and more dangerous. Not necessarily best practice, but I'm all for rolling stops in the meantime.
Roundabouts are awesome (for cars), when the intersection was designed and has space for it. Retrofitting them into intersections often doen't work. They do it a lot in my city in smaller residential intersections. They can be so tight that the turning radius of a mid-large size car or SUV won't allow circumnavigation. People drive over the center, and still make left turns because it is so hard to get around.
Where I am, they fix the "drive over the center" problem by making it a giant concrete barrier so you can't drive over the center unless you have a monster truck.
Paramedic here. Have been called to more than one MVA where your regular sedan has successfully "climbed" a 20" vertical concrete raised center of a roundabout. Energy and inertia is a powerful thing!
There is one in my city and it is in popular shopping center, so it get a heavy usage out of it. In the center, there is trees and rocks as decorations and designed to prevent anyone from driving over the center. There is other city that have a small (1-lane) roundabout, the center is protected with chain "rope-like" barrier with the sign to drive right.
My friend crashed through the center of recently retrofired roundabout and took flying for a few meters. The policeman was very happy since he won a bet that it'll take less than 3 days for the first car flying.
In that use case, the goal is simply a rule for determining right-of-way. Doesn't really matter if they drive over the center as long as they wait their turn to do so.
The issue is space to put roundabouts. Majority of American cities already have roads set up and it would be difficult to put in the roundabout to replace existing infrastructures. Roundabout requires more space than a simple 2-lane wide 4-way intersection.
And there is a driver problem, majority of American almost never have any experience driving on roundabouts. I seen some would simply cut off the roundabout traffic and proceed on their way without yielding.
I think most crossroads could accomodate a mini roundabout, maybe lopping off each corner a bit. Where I live, converting an crossroad to a roundabout seems to take about a year, they close and completely excavate the existing roadway, relocate storm drains, build a huge center island, and take an additional 10' of property all around. It seems excessive.
Many stop signs could be replaced by yield signs. The energy savings would be enormous. A full stop should only be needed when making a left hand turn or needed for sighting, and there are many stop signs in places where left turns are impossible.
There are issues with mini roundabouts, two I regularly see in my home town:
- If you have one 'entrance' to the roundabout which is partially busy, say at rush hour, it becomes near impossible to enter the roundabout from a different direction. With a normal roundabout many more cars can be on the roundabout at once and a natural flow, even from less used entrances, just happened. This does not work on a mini roundabout.
- Where they have replaced a T junction, people often ignore it causing (near) accidents when going "straight on" when they don't have right of way.
They are definitely not a one size fits all solution.
I'd wish new construction aimed for that, but converting existing four-way stops to roundabouts would require widening of the road at all four corners which is impractical (i.e. you may have to knock down buildings, but certainly have to re-place sidewalks).
The data shows that roundabouts are safer and even improve traffic flow. But they're also a nightmare to install after the fact, which is why it is so uncommon. All we can do is stop making the same mistakes going forward.
Same thing with burying power lines: Far cheaper to do with new construction, substantially more reliable and better able to withstand natural disasters, but we aren't. Society is just bad at planning for tomorrow if it costs us a little today at every level.
I live in an area with roundabouts. The frequency of collisions actually seems higher because people do not know the rules and do not yield before entering the roundabout.
I live in an area with roundabouts. There are very few accidents in roundabouts and it's impossible to get a license if you don't know how the rules for a roundabout.
What the studies say is; "they can substantially reduce crashes that result in serious injury or death." That is not the same as a reduction in the total number of accidents. The number of accidents may actually be higher in a roundabout, but the severity is lower and they are more survivable.
In Iceland they have many roundabouts all over, and at most low residential intersections there's simply a yield for one of the intersecting roads. Having a yield instead of having to come to a stop is so refreshing.
You are also required to have your lights on when you are driving. It notably increases visibility even during the day.
I came back to the US really wishing those policies would go into effect nationwide.
Yes I would love to see the elimination of the four-way stop intersection. One road should be designated as the "arterial" road and should not stop. The crossing road should yield. There are very few cases where a four-way stop is justified.
They're almost the default now in my area of the US if at all plausible.
Having said that a lot of roads in my area are already built around 4 way stops and it's not easy to undo that, but new construction in my area of suburbia US has adopted the roundabout.
Then ask our legislatures to change the law. Don't let private companies make cars that disobey the laws developed by elected officials and those they appoint.
We have one roundabout in my small town, and there is strong hatred towards it. There's a perception that it's far more dangerous than any alternatives.
