I have to admit, I’m spoiled. After riding extensively in the UK where traffic circles and roundabouts are the norm, a road journey here at home can feel awfully frustrating. In the region where I ride most often, I regularly encounter more than a few stoplights that are both interminably long and poorly designed. Whenever I’m stuck at one of these Penn DOT-devised patience-testers, I ask myself aloud in my helmet, “why the hell don’t they just build roundabouts at intersections like this so we can all keep moving?”
As if by magic, the powers-that-be seem to have heard my desperate pleas (however audible they are above the whirring of my motorcycle’s feeble cooling fans) and instituted a statewide program to build dozens of new roundabouts throughout the state of Pennsylvania. This ambitious program was launched a couple of years back and targeted just the sort of infuriating, multi-way intersections we all know and loathe. It just so happens that one of the busier traffic circles recently opened near the CRM garage and when I first heard about its existence, I was understandably thrilled.
Unfortunately, the reality of the situation turns out to be far less auspicious than imagined.
When state traffic engineers convinced our famously stingy legislature to fund the program, one budget item they left unaddressed was the need to school American motorists on exactly how these asphalt cure-alls are meant to work.
The basic rule goes something like this: whoever’s vehicle happens to already be traversing the circle has the right-of-way. That means slowing your car, or in my neck of the woods, oversized pick-up truck, as you approach the turn-in lane of your choosing and then peering ahead to see whether another moving vehicle is already in the circle. If one does appear on the immediate horizon, slowing as not to collide withs aid vehicle is the assumed proper way to go about things. But with no communications issued by means of a public service announcement on just how roundabouts are to be traversed, I’m constantly encountering obnoxious,
me first” motorists who’s chosen technique, if you can describe it as such, is to simply accelerate at the mere sight of a traffic circle, just before aiming their chromed grill and bumper at whomever is in their path.
I understand that I’m not riding in a country where politeness and shared courtesy are national traits. This is American after all, a land where aggression, especially behind the wheel, is the favored attitude. Despite some bad behavior on the part f some motorists, Penn DOT swears the freshly completed roundabouts are far safer overall than traditional intersections. They reduce traffic accidents by as much as 85% in some instances and their inherent design slows traffic considerably. This is all mighty encouraging especially as additional traffic circles are in the works nationwide. But for all our collective sakes, let’s take a deep breath, look to the left before entering a circle and yield- I know, it’s a foreign concept – to the preceding drivers.
