I just thought of a second roundabout I’ve used.  It’s behind a pizza place - but it’s used in the entrance of the shopping center.

What sort of weird arse roundabouts do you people have??? Our roundabouts are just everyday, normal roundabouts like the ones Mark described. Sheesh, talk about taking a good idea and complicating it!

I only know of one roundabout anywhere near here that has traffic lights, and those only turn on to stop traffic when the emergency vehicles from the adjoining firehouse come charging out.  The general idea of roundabouts, whenever I’ve seen people justifying spending money and snarling up traffic patterns to build one, is that they don’t need traffic signals.

Yeah, I thought the point was NOT to have the lights, but I have seen them..

For a thrill ride better than any amusement park, try the one around l’Arc de Triomphe in Paris. I have read that no insurance company will insure any car that drives around it.

There is a little teeny roundabout near where I work, but most people avoid it like the plague (Midwestern US: “DON’T CONFUSE US WITH NEW IDEAS!”). I like it because there is so little traffic going that way it is an awesome short cut after work.

But to get to the point, the roundabouts I’ve seen in Europe that have traffic lights use the lights to regulate traffic going ON TO the roundabout, but not off of it. These tended to be very large roundabouts with a lot of traffic. It seems to work fairly well.

BugbearSloth - 08 September 2005 04:08 PM

For a thrill ride better than any amusement park, try the one around l’Arc de Triomphe in Paris. I have read that no insurance company will insure any car that drives around it.

I’ve been around there! It was fun, but it took us ages to figure out how to get off, the French drive really differently to us british. Of course, I was only a passenger…

thunderstruck - 09 September 2005 07:17 PM

. . .the French drive really differently to us british.

Indeed.  The British drive with their eyes open.

sometimes…