Oshkosh Police will be stepping up their patrols in the areas of the city's roundabouts again. This time, officers will be watching for drivers failing to yield the right of way to pedestrians and bikers using the crosswalks at the traffic circles. City Manager Mark Rohloff all but admits that those on foot are taking their lives in their own hands when they try to cross streets at the roundabouts. It's hard to believe that the orange flags didn't make a difference.
The clear and present danger to pedestrians is just another element in the growing list of failures endemic to roundabouts. Officials have finally given up trying to argue that they don't cause more accidents--falling back on the "at least the injuries sustained in the crashes aren't as serious" claim. Now our "progressive engineers" are pushing for "diverging diamond intersections" as the new panacea for car crashes--because forcing all traffic to cross itself twice in a couple hundred feet should definitely make things safer.
The fatal flaw in roundabout design is that it relies on three human elements to succeed: Judgment, Patience, and Respect. And as the numbers and empirical evidence bear out, most drivers lack as least one--and in some cases all three--of those elements.
An intersection controlled by a stop light presents three simple options: Red means stop, Green means go, Yellow means gun it. But at the uncontrolled roundabout, every driver needs to make the decision: "can I beat this next vehicle into the circle?" Also, because "failure to yield" isn't considered as serious in many people's minds as "running a red" some choose to not even slow down or look to their left before entering the roundabout.
And then there is patience. Unfortunately, traffic from a couple of directions can dominate a roundabout--leaving people in the less-busy directions frustrated that they don't get to go. That leads to more drivers risking a high-speed entry in an effort to "finally get through". Of course, most people are running late and any delay to their trip creates great stress--which affects the aforementioned judgment component of safe roundabout usage.
The biggest source of failure though is the respect element. Plain and simple, most people on the road today believe that they are the most-important person on the road--and all others must yield to them. As George Carlin perfectly summed up: "Anyone driving slower than you is an idiot. Anyone driving faster than you is a maniac!!" I can almost see on the faces of those who regularly cut me off in the Witzel Street roundabouts that they are thinking, "Why is the person approaching from the left given preference in this situation? I'm in a hurry here!" And the idea that a pedestrian has the right of way in a crosswalk not even in the intersection--and with no flashing yellow lights or control signal is completely foreign to them. "They should only cross when there is no traffic coming" is their thinking about that.
I admit that I have come close to hitting people in the crosswalks at roundabouts. You can't see them as you enter the roundabout to go straight or to turn left. And since you have to keep a very close eye on the people trying to gun it in front of you from the other entrances--you can't always keep an eye on what's ahead of you as you exit. And that is why I don't ride my bike to work anymore.
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