So many comments talking about how straightforward some roundabouts are, but I think you guys are confused. Roundabouts are never straightforward, you're thinking of a normal road.
Hey all, I'm the author of this game. I didn't expect to see it on HN! I wrote it to add some fun to all the conversations happening in the local forums about this roundabout. They've been heated at times. And, yes, this roundabout is right next to the Kirkland Costco.
I definitely agree with all the critiques of the gameplay - and I have about 100 more. I cut it down to the bare essentials to get it done while it's still relevant in the community. I wouldn't even call it an MVP. I probably won't update this unless there is some greater need. Though using Godot with Claude Code was a blast so I'm motivated to do new stuff there. I've been building solutions on Unity/DX/Unreal for over a decade - Godot was such a breath of fresh air!
I've been driving roundabouts for decades, and think they're great - they really help with traffic flow. I've never found them confusing.
I had to drive this specific Kirkland roundabout the other day, and ended up missing my offramp and going in completely the wrong direction. It's the most confusing roundabout I've ever seen.
I live moments away from this roundabout. It's confusing. Single-lane roundabouts are really straightforward. You're either clear to enter, or you're not.
Adding lanes makes it far more confusing. I consider myself, you know, pretty smart. Not stupid, at least.
But I almost sideswiped someone in this roundabout the other day. Years of driving experience gave me an intuition that the middle lane would not cross over the outer lane. E.x. a car in the inner lane would not pass through the outer lane (except at the very end). So when I saw an oncoming car in the inner lane I thoguht I was safe to enter the outer lane. Not so. The inner lane car was actually lane-changing to the outer lane (at the exact point I was about to enter the roundabout) in order to exit.
The lanes are quite narrow, and the outer curb is deceptive - there’s a 1” edge with a curved curb behind it making it look wider than it actually is. Scraping along that edge will push cars into the center of the road. There will be a lot of minor accidents here due to the road design.
One other second order effect - people are getting used to roundabouts here now, but nearby are ‘traffic circles’ that are roundabouts with stop signs on some entrances. People are now ignoring those stop signs (because it’s a roundabout!). I almost hit 3 cars in 2 intersections as people ignored their stop sign.
> Single-lane roundabouts are really straightforward
Like the Arc de Triomphe roundabout? :)
If it had lane marking there would apparently be 10 tracks around the circle.
What makes it seem crazy is cars entering have right of way.
The reason it works seems to be French attitude. Cars entering do their thing, and cars already going around do their thing (and just have to avoid anyone on their right).
Not hitting anyone is a skill some people seem to lack. Sometimes the rules say one thing, but you have to do another, mostly give way even if you're not supposed to yield.
- there should be a gas pedal and a brake, rather than the car going forward at a constant speed unless I hit the brakes.
- the car should go straight, unless I turn. if I don't do anything near the exit of a roundabout, sometimes the "default" behavior is to exit the roundabout, sometimes it's to turn and continue within the roundabout.
frustration with the last point was enough for me to give up trying to play it. I'm sure the LLM that vibe-coded this thinks the controls make perfect sense, though.
in general:
is this trying to make a point of some kind about the design of the interchange? the "Inspired by online discussions of the Kirkland roundabouts" text sort of hints at that but it's unclear how.
is the point that it's overly complicated? or is the point that it's actually not that complicated, in response to people criticizing it? I can imagine it going either way...but the poor controls mean that it's not really effective at making either point.
different roundabout / intersection types would make this much more interesting. I've driven through the "diverging diamond" interchange of I-5 in Lacey [0] before, and it was a bit confusing the first time but now doesn't seem any more complicated than any other busy highway intersection. or, add a before & after comparing the old Kirkland interchange design to the new roundabout.
I rather agree. The layout actually looks pretty straightforward, but the controls make it annoyingly hard.
Though, in real life, people often don't look at the road markings - possibly even more true in America, where people are perhaps less familiar with the roundabout concept - and general directions of traffic flow is an issue. Perhaps driving this particular roundabout in real life might indeed turn out to be as annoying as this game is to play.
(There are a couple of straightforward-looking ones near me that, in practice, are almost impossible during busy times in specific directions. Even if your car is powerful enough to zip onto the roundabout in a tiny gap without there being a crash, now you have to not crash while making it turn...)
A town I grew up in went absolutely crazy with roundabouts over the last 10 years or so. They built them everywhere. Most are pretty straightforward and they simplify traffic a ton but there were some bad design choices made.
There are accidents here almost every week and when an out of towner comes off the interstate to get some gas at Sam's Club (where I used to work) I had to try and explain to them how to get back onto the interstate...
I might try to clone this project idea, it was fun to play!
I don't think Australia has many true four way stops in cities and towns. Usually there's a give way sign on two of the directions, or lights, or a roundabout.
Unmarked intersections do exist, mostly on bush tracks and backroads, but I don't think I've ever seen the four stop sign arrangement here in Vic. Apparently it's slightly more common in NSW.
That is a very basic roundabout. I was expecting by "magic" that you would have to go round some part in reverse (clockwise for US left-hand driving). This is nothing compared to the original "magic" roundabout of Swindon, Wiltshire.
This interchange might have been better off using a diverging diamond interchange layout [1]. While not a roundabout they are "magic" and we should use them more often.
They just look confusing because at some point you are effectively driving on the wrong side of the road, but are extremely efficient. My daily commute includes one that cuts a few minutes off what it once took to negotiate the previous traditional interchange.
> This is nothing compared to the original "magic" roundabout of Swindon, Wiltshire.
There should be a law (I'd suggest Dougal's Law) describing how any discussion of road design will inevitably lead to a mention of the Magic Roundabout :D
We have one of those diverging diamond ones in the general area too (at the I90/SR18 junction). It's interesting to drive through until you get used to it.
I hit that one a few weeks ago, having apparently not been that way in quite a while. I’m down with some roundabouts, but that intersection definitely kept me in my toes.
it does note that it's satire. a lot of drivers in America have reflexive dislike of roundabouts.
this one probably is not good for a DDI because it is also supposed to be a bus interchange for a BRT project, and the buses will stop at the roundabout level.
The majority of drivers don't know the signaling rules for roundabouts so the end result is no one uses signals on them for anything and this you never know what people are going to do next when they are in one.
All in all they end up being rather unpleasant to use through no fault of their own.
There's one installed a few years ago north of it where 132nd goes under the freeway. It used to have 2 lights to get through under the freeway. Now there are 2 roundabouts. I never have to wait anymore. It's a big win.
Yes, because nobody goes that way anymore - It's too much of a time sink, significantly because you never end up where you want to go. Instead the real crossing points got even more crowded, or were until this abomination got installed.
Thankfully, I literally sold my house because of it, and my timing was good and I got out before prices dropped.
Another reason it's way better is because of all the time spent waiting at a red light when there's zero cross traffic. The traffic lights all have cameras now, you'd think the traffic engineers would hook it up to AI and optimize the lights. But no.
A taste of what that would be like is when all the power goes out, including the power to the traffic lights. Traffic moves faster! Because drivers cooperate. Traffic also moves faster when a cop is directing traffic.
The lights in my small Pennsylvania town just got cameras and do seem to be using ML to recognize traffic build-up and optimize dynamically for traffic flow. Pretty cool stuff.
I think the real reason they were installed was because of a new state law that goes into effect this July where you'll be fined if you're spotted holding a smartphone by a traffic cam. Still, the faster light changes are quite welcome.
…a new state law that goes into effect this July where you'll be fined if you're spotted holding a smartphone by a traffic cam.
Wait, what?! I’m at a loss as to the behavior they’re trying to curb with such a law.
EDIT: OIC, it’s not “using a phone near a traffic cam”, it’s “using a phone while driving (even at a stop light) and a traffic cam captures you doing it”.
The linked ones, also called "magic roundabouts", are roundabout rings made out of roundabouts. In particular, you can take them clockwise or anticlockwise - it is a ring of roads connected by mini roundabouts. Even just the road sign gives you a headache!
Having been exposed to the idea for over a decade, I still don't know instinctively how to navigate them.
They're really simple - arguably the problem is people try to treat them as a single complex unit rather than just "5 junctions in a row". Trying to think of them as a whole is rather pointless and self defeating, as there's no real advantage to doing so.
Most people have no problems with the idea of a road network loop - such as around a block - but that's exactly the same thing from a driving point of view.
I'm all for hating bad infrastructure, but this roundabout seems pretty straightforward? Maybe it's different when you're actually driving on it, but from a topdown view it's clear it's a central roundabout with some extra sidelanes to avoid the roundabout if you're immediately turning right.
Talking to my American colleagues, they're often perplexed by roundabouts and don't really understand how they fundamentally work. They're also incredibly stubborn when it comes to convincing them that it helps with traffic flow immensely versus a 4 way stop sign.
When you’re walking the stop sign stops traffic for you so it’s a lot nicer. I’ve found that even with a marked crosswalk people ignore you if they’re not forced to stop.
And as a pedestrian, drivers going around a circle aren't necessarily going to see you until they're already exiting, even if the city didn't put something large in the center that entirely blocks their vision. Plus, you lose the ability to know which way a car is likely to go until it's already too late.
When I lived in Nashville, I spent a lot of time near a roundabout, and even after they redid it to be a bit better I still had to avoid it for my own safety. The light-controlled intersection next to it was much less of a problem.
I almost like them, but my commute long ago involved one that revealed a frustrating pathological case. Constant traffic flow in one direction can make an entrance entirely unusable. It makes the average trip more efficient, but the worst case becomes dramatically worse.
>Constant traffic flow in one direction can make an entrance entirely unusable.
Seems like a poorly designed roundabout then. You should just pull into the roundabout, right after the car already in the roundabout passes by. Something is wrong if one direction of traffic can block the flow from other directions.
It's more a poor place for a roundabout. It was a very busy intersection in one direction, where the switch to roundabouts meant there was no longer a break in traffic. What it needed was a light with a sensor to let the very sporadic side traffic through (technically, a roundabout can have this, but the 3/4-way intersection that's always green except when someone needs it to not be is better), what we got was an endless stream of cars blocking the way for a lot of the day. If you pull in after the car already in the roundabout passes by, you get hit by the next one.
The figure-8 central design makes this roundabout not a real roundabout. The challenge is that the entry and exit points are at the tightest part of the curve, making ingress and egress kind of weird. It looks like they did it because of space constraints on the bridge. What I find weird is the tightness of the on/off ramp, which share a very small part of the central lanes. In a traditional circle, they are spaced more apart, making exiting and entering smoother.
If it were a regular 2-lane traffic circle, it wouldn't be too difficult to navigate.
Personally, I find multiple-lane traffic circles (4+) to be more difficult to navigate, mostly when some people in the center lanes pull a fast right turn across all lanes of traffic. Otherwise, much better than traffic lights at keeping traffic moving or first-come, first-served stop intersections when people don't really stop or sit there waving you through.
I live a couple of blocks away from this Kirkland roundabout and I drive through it very often -- almost every time I go anywhere. Overall, I like it. My average traversal through the roundabout, for just about any source/destination, seems a bit faster than the pre-roundabout infrastructure and much faster than the temporary so-many-stoplights configuration they had for the past year or two.
I used the roundabout the game is modeled after the other day. This is at the freeway exit used to get to the Costco AND downtown in Kirkland. I've seen pileups here for no reason. It's insane.
To be fair, I'm not sure there's a good solution. The real problem is the volume of traffic and that it dumps onto two lane roads at the edges of this roundabout. To really fix things you need to give people other exits to use.
I drove on this for the first time yesterday, once from 405 S to 85th W, then back on 85th E and 405 N. Super easy, the lanes are fairly nicely signed and there is ample signage. No issues at all.
Roundabouts are almost always a good idea, assuming there is sufficient traffic. They keep traffic flowing faster, more predictably, and with fewer accidents.
No, they just interrupt the flow of traffic by slowing it down. The classic pattern of side roads with less traffic yielding to incoming traffic on the main road carrying more traffic is the correct road layout that minimizes frustration and confusion. Roundabouts are the favorite tool of left-leaning, anti-car, vanilla soy latte-sipping urban planners.
Btw your 'classic pattern' of highly unbalanced traffic flows is specifically called out as a non-ideal candidate for a roundabout, maybe the urban planners get cow milk in their lattes after all.
I'm assuming these are AI-generated songs... but they're so funny. I think "hilarious songs" is an underrated use of AI. It used to require a lot to make a catchy tune, so we were limited to the output of the few comedians who were talented musicians. But the ability to have a silly theme song of this quality, for a joke game, friend group in-joke, or a company retreat... this is something I like about AI!
I was surprised that the U.S. probably only has around 11,000 roundabouts. I thought it would be higher. If they were as popular as they are in my local area, there would be over 70,000 in the U.S.
The problem is that at intersections the normative behavior of American drivers is to queue and wait for your turn. Roundabouts assume a different behavior based on jumping the line.
Thus there is a lot of unpredictability regarding other drivers due to generations of driving patterns developed in diverse regional driving cultures...many of which are distinctly not-urban.
In addition, this roundabout is part of an Interstate Highway interchange. The US Interstate system is at a scale that doesn't occur elsewhere. It is transcontinental.
> The problem is that at intersections the normative behavior of American drivers is to queue and wait for your turn. Roundabouts assume a different behavior based on jumping the line.
I don't think it's that different from turning right on red, or left without an arrow, or even merging on to the highway from an onramp (maybe that's the most similar, traffic in the others aren't flowing the same direction as you).
The US has been building roundabouts for about 30 years.
It has a lot of intersections.
Reconfiguring intersections is expensive and disruptive. Stop signs and traffic lights take less space and are often the simplest thing that might work.
From what I understand roundabouts make accident rate go up, it is the severity of accidents that goes down which probably still a positive.
That said I have yet to drive through a roundabout that I think improved an intersection in any meaningful way. Half of them work as intended but I find them less pleasant to drive through, the other half are just horribly designed and often have semitrucks go through them when they aren't really large enough for that.
>From what I understand roundabouts make accident rate go up,
"Studies of intersections in the United States converted from traffic signals or stop signs to roundabouts have found reductions in injury crashes of 72%-80% and reductions in all crashes of 35%-47%"
> From what I understand roundabouts make accident rate go up, it is the severity of accidents that goes down which probably still a positive.
That's the argument I keep hearing, but I'm not sure I buy it. Fewer people might be injured physically but even low speed accidents can cost thousands in repairs if not total your car, so going from a few people being hurt a year to multiple people losing their cars or being forced to pay out thousands every few weeks doesn't seem like a win to me.
I love this roundabout, we live down the street from it. People around here drive comically bad, mostly from what i suspect is simple inexperience (many new drivers), with a surprising side of entitlement (super rich area). Together, its become my favorite experience to see all the ways people fail to navigate this wild "roundabout".
And yet it still mostly works, and is loads faster than the former lights that were there before, so i suspect it will be a success in most eyes once everyone adapts.
For additional fun, check out the sticker price on this intersection overhaul (which includes much more than the round about).
I'm a huge roundabout fan, but this does indeed look nasty. Seattle area driving in general is pretty bad. There's an exit on the 5 in downtown Seattle that's on the far left lane (Seneca street I believe) that feels like putting your life on the line every time you need to take it.
In my town of Shrewsbury PA we have a diverging diamond traffic pattern(it's sorta like a figure 8). I have no issue with it tho I have seen a car accident or two there. Roundabouts are simple and so is the diverging diamond.
The adjoining roads have a large speed differential. The runoff areas around this project do not appear as if designed with this in mind. I predict a few horrible accidents and some hamfisted redesigns.
The local news has a ground level view of this project:
So many comments talking about how straightforward some roundabouts are, but I think you guys are confused. Roundabouts are never straightforward, you're thinking of a normal road.
Is this a play on the word "straight[-]forward"?
No, its a play on the word roundabouts
This is a bit of a traffic circle way of explaining the joke.
So ... in a roundabout way, it's straight—forward, and in a straightforward way, it's roundabout?
Hey all, I'm the author of this game. I didn't expect to see it on HN! I wrote it to add some fun to all the conversations happening in the local forums about this roundabout. They've been heated at times. And, yes, this roundabout is right next to the Kirkland Costco.
I definitely agree with all the critiques of the gameplay - and I have about 100 more. I cut it down to the bare essentials to get it done while it's still relevant in the community. I wouldn't even call it an MVP. I probably won't update this unless there is some greater need. Though using Godot with Claude Code was a blast so I'm motivated to do new stuff there. I've been building solutions on Unity/DX/Unreal for over a decade - Godot was such a breath of fresh air!
Do this one! https://maps.app.goo.gl/wmwjQctXpRtXAdKS7
The playlist is hilarious and really helps nail the feeling of driving around in circles! Love it!
For bonus points, tackle Tumwater next!
https://www.google.com/maps/@46.9995932,-122.9095898,279m/da...
This thing is a nightmare of newly constructed, but with poor signage, rapid lane changes required at times, and "wait, which roundabout?"
I raise you The Magic Roundabout https://maps.app.goo.gl/1Mj8tSvKNBnQMu8V7
The best part about Kirkland Roundabouts is that they come in a handy family-size 24 pack.
I'll let myself out.
The original Costco HQ building overlooks this new intersection, so this is almost a relevant comment
I've been driving roundabouts for decades, and think they're great - they really help with traffic flow. I've never found them confusing.
I had to drive this specific Kirkland roundabout the other day, and ended up missing my offramp and going in completely the wrong direction. It's the most confusing roundabout I've ever seen.
Yeah, it's honestly an astounding creation. I enjoy driving it, if only for the bit.
There appear to be many such peanut roundabouts around the world, many of them in the US[1]
[1]https://panethos.wordpress.com/2024/06/14/working-list-peanu...
I did not understand why all the commentary in the game was about giant peanuts until I read your comment. Thank you!
I live moments away from this roundabout. It's confusing. Single-lane roundabouts are really straightforward. You're either clear to enter, or you're not.
Adding lanes makes it far more confusing. I consider myself, you know, pretty smart. Not stupid, at least.
But I almost sideswiped someone in this roundabout the other day. Years of driving experience gave me an intuition that the middle lane would not cross over the outer lane. E.x. a car in the inner lane would not pass through the outer lane (except at the very end). So when I saw an oncoming car in the inner lane I thoguht I was safe to enter the outer lane. Not so. The inner lane car was actually lane-changing to the outer lane (at the exact point I was about to enter the roundabout) in order to exit.
I too live nearby
The lanes are quite narrow, and the outer curb is deceptive - there’s a 1” edge with a curved curb behind it making it look wider than it actually is. Scraping along that edge will push cars into the center of the road. There will be a lot of minor accidents here due to the road design.
One other second order effect - people are getting used to roundabouts here now, but nearby are ‘traffic circles’ that are roundabouts with stop signs on some entrances. People are now ignoring those stop signs (because it’s a roundabout!). I almost hit 3 cars in 2 intersections as people ignored their stop sign.
traffic circles (w/ stop signs) are an abomination and should be removed
They exist so people cannot run through the stop sign. Their only connection to a round about is the shape.
> Years of driving experience gave me an intuition that [another motorist wouldn't be a complete blithering idiot]
I regret to inform you...
> Single-lane roundabouts are really straightforward
Like the Arc de Triomphe roundabout? :)
If it had lane marking there would apparently be 10 tracks around the circle.
What makes it seem crazy is cars entering have right of way.
The reason it works seems to be French attitude. Cars entering do their thing, and cars already going around do their thing (and just have to avoid anyone on their right).
Not hitting anyone is a skill some people seem to lack. Sometimes the rules say one thing, but you have to do another, mostly give way even if you're not supposed to yield.
about the gameplay specifically:
- have a mute button for the background music.
- there should be a gas pedal and a brake, rather than the car going forward at a constant speed unless I hit the brakes.
- the car should go straight, unless I turn. if I don't do anything near the exit of a roundabout, sometimes the "default" behavior is to exit the roundabout, sometimes it's to turn and continue within the roundabout.
frustration with the last point was enough for me to give up trying to play it. I'm sure the LLM that vibe-coded this thinks the controls make perfect sense, though.
in general:
is this trying to make a point of some kind about the design of the interchange? the "Inspired by online discussions of the Kirkland roundabouts" text sort of hints at that but it's unclear how.
is the point that it's overly complicated? or is the point that it's actually not that complicated, in response to people criticizing it? I can imagine it going either way...but the poor controls mean that it's not really effective at making either point.
different roundabout / intersection types would make this much more interesting. I've driven through the "diverging diamond" interchange of I-5 in Lacey [0] before, and it was a bit confusing the first time but now doesn't seem any more complicated than any other busy highway intersection. or, add a before & after comparing the old Kirkland interchange design to the new roundabout.
0: https://wsdot.wa.gov/travel/traffic-safety-methods/diverging...
I rather agree. The layout actually looks pretty straightforward, but the controls make it annoyingly hard.
Though, in real life, people often don't look at the road markings - possibly even more true in America, where people are perhaps less familiar with the roundabout concept - and general directions of traffic flow is an issue. Perhaps driving this particular roundabout in real life might indeed turn out to be as annoying as this game is to play.
(There are a couple of straightforward-looking ones near me that, in practice, are almost impossible during busy times in specific directions. Even if your car is powerful enough to zip onto the roundabout in a tiny gap without there being a crash, now you have to not crash while making it turn...)
A town I grew up in went absolutely crazy with roundabouts over the last 10 years or so. They built them everywhere. Most are pretty straightforward and they simplify traffic a ton but there were some bad design choices made.
Take this similarly confusing double-roundabout for example https://maps.app.goo.gl/VTSrSWsBGnsYyzKU6
There are accidents here almost every week and when an out of towner comes off the interstate to get some gas at Sam's Club (where I used to work) I had to try and explain to them how to get back onto the interstate...
I might try to clone this project idea, it was fun to play!
They also proposed a peanut style roundabout with a *train track going through it* that thankfully has not been built yet https://media.conwayarkansas.gov/media/documents/project/85/...
I grew up in a town in Australia nicknamed “the city of roundabouts.”
Four way stops simply don’t exist.
When well designed, roundabouts are excellent for traffic flow and reducing accidents and severity of accidents.
If I was king for a day I’d replace all four way stops with them.
I don't think Australia has many true four way stops in cities and towns. Usually there's a give way sign on two of the directions, or lights, or a roundabout.
Unmarked intersections do exist, mostly on bush tracks and backroads, but I don't think I've ever seen the four stop sign arrangement here in Vic. Apparently it's slightly more common in NSW.
As far as I’m aware they are nonexistent. I’ve driven a lot of the country and never seen one.
obligatory callout to Carmel, Indiana who have made great strides in implementing roundabouts as much as possible
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmel,_Indiana
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cc12tk--qU
Grew up in windy Warrnambool. Guessing you are from my home town or Albury, WA.
That is a very basic roundabout. I was expecting by "magic" that you would have to go round some part in reverse (clockwise for US left-hand driving). This is nothing compared to the original "magic" roundabout of Swindon, Wiltshire.
This interchange might have been better off using a diverging diamond interchange layout [1]. While not a roundabout they are "magic" and we should use them more often.
They just look confusing because at some point you are effectively driving on the wrong side of the road, but are extremely efficient. My daily commute includes one that cuts a few minutes off what it once took to negotiate the previous traditional interchange.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diverging_diamond_interchange
> This is nothing compared to the original "magic" roundabout of Swindon, Wiltshire.
There should be a law (I'd suggest Dougal's Law) describing how any discussion of road design will inevitably lead to a mention of the Magic Roundabout :D
We have one of those diverging diamond ones in the general area too (at the I90/SR18 junction). It's interesting to drive through until you get used to it.
I hit that one a few weeks ago, having apparently not been that way in quite a while. I’m down with some roundabouts, but that intersection definitely kept me in my toes.
it does note that it's satire. a lot of drivers in America have reflexive dislike of roundabouts.
this one probably is not good for a DDI because it is also supposed to be a bus interchange for a BRT project, and the buses will stop at the roundabout level.
The majority of drivers don't know the signaling rules for roundabouts so the end result is no one uses signals on them for anything and this you never know what people are going to do next when they are in one.
All in all they end up being rather unpleasant to use through no fault of their own.
Probably an instance where busses need their own level/ramps.
There's one installed a few years ago north of it where 132nd goes under the freeway. It used to have 2 lights to get through under the freeway. Now there are 2 roundabouts. I never have to wait anymore. It's a big win.
Agree, really thankful for those
Yes, because nobody goes that way anymore - It's too much of a time sink, significantly because you never end up where you want to go. Instead the real crossing points got even more crowded, or were until this abomination got installed.
Thankfully, I literally sold my house because of it, and my timing was good and I got out before prices dropped.
Another reason it's way better is because of all the time spent waiting at a red light when there's zero cross traffic. The traffic lights all have cameras now, you'd think the traffic engineers would hook it up to AI and optimize the lights. But no.
A taste of what that would be like is when all the power goes out, including the power to the traffic lights. Traffic moves faster! Because drivers cooperate. Traffic also moves faster when a cop is directing traffic.
The lights in my small Pennsylvania town just got cameras and do seem to be using ML to recognize traffic build-up and optimize dynamically for traffic flow. Pretty cool stuff.
I think the real reason they were installed was because of a new state law that goes into effect this July where you'll be fined if you're spotted holding a smartphone by a traffic cam. Still, the faster light changes are quite welcome.
…a new state law that goes into effect this July where you'll be fined if you're spotted holding a smartphone by a traffic cam.
Wait, what?! I’m at a loss as to the behavior they’re trying to curb with such a law.
EDIT: OIC, it’s not “using a phone near a traffic cam”, it’s “using a phone while driving (even at a stop light) and a traffic cam captures you doing it”.
Somewhat relevant: https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/new-pa-ban-on-cel...
I assumed it would be like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Roundabout_(Swindon) or this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Roundabout_(Hemel_Hempst... . Instead, topologically, it is a normal roundabout, just with unusual (negative) curvatures.
The linked ones, also called "magic roundabouts", are roundabout rings made out of roundabouts. In particular, you can take them clockwise or anticlockwise - it is a ring of roads connected by mini roundabouts. Even just the road sign gives you a headache!
Having been exposed to the idea for over a decade, I still don't know instinctively how to navigate them.
They're really simple - arguably the problem is people try to treat them as a single complex unit rather than just "5 junctions in a row". Trying to think of them as a whole is rather pointless and self defeating, as there's no real advantage to doing so.
Most people have no problems with the idea of a road network loop - such as around a block - but that's exactly the same thing from a driving point of view.
I'm all for hating bad infrastructure, but this roundabout seems pretty straightforward? Maybe it's different when you're actually driving on it, but from a topdown view it's clear it's a central roundabout with some extra sidelanes to avoid the roundabout if you're immediately turning right.
Talking to my American colleagues, they're often perplexed by roundabouts and don't really understand how they fundamentally work. They're also incredibly stubborn when it comes to convincing them that it helps with traffic flow immensely versus a 4 way stop sign.
When you’re walking the stop sign stops traffic for you so it’s a lot nicer. I’ve found that even with a marked crosswalk people ignore you if they’re not forced to stop.
And as a pedestrian, drivers going around a circle aren't necessarily going to see you until they're already exiting, even if the city didn't put something large in the center that entirely blocks their vision. Plus, you lose the ability to know which way a car is likely to go until it's already too late.
When I lived in Nashville, I spent a lot of time near a roundabout, and even after they redid it to be a bit better I still had to avoid it for my own safety. The light-controlled intersection next to it was much less of a problem.
I almost like them, but my commute long ago involved one that revealed a frustrating pathological case. Constant traffic flow in one direction can make an entrance entirely unusable. It makes the average trip more efficient, but the worst case becomes dramatically worse.
>Constant traffic flow in one direction can make an entrance entirely unusable.
Seems like a poorly designed roundabout then. You should just pull into the roundabout, right after the car already in the roundabout passes by. Something is wrong if one direction of traffic can block the flow from other directions.
It's more a poor place for a roundabout. It was a very busy intersection in one direction, where the switch to roundabouts meant there was no longer a break in traffic. What it needed was a light with a sensor to let the very sporadic side traffic through (technically, a roundabout can have this, but the 3/4-way intersection that's always green except when someone needs it to not be is better), what we got was an endless stream of cars blocking the way for a lot of the day. If you pull in after the car already in the roundabout passes by, you get hit by the next one.
This is so stressful to play. Can you change the music?
The figure-8 central design makes this roundabout not a real roundabout. The challenge is that the entry and exit points are at the tightest part of the curve, making ingress and egress kind of weird. It looks like they did it because of space constraints on the bridge. What I find weird is the tightness of the on/off ramp, which share a very small part of the central lanes. In a traditional circle, they are spaced more apart, making exiting and entering smoother.
If it were a regular 2-lane traffic circle, it wouldn't be too difficult to navigate.
Personally, I find multiple-lane traffic circles (4+) to be more difficult to navigate, mostly when some people in the center lanes pull a fast right turn across all lanes of traffic. Otherwise, much better than traffic lights at keeping traffic moving or first-come, first-served stop intersections when people don't really stop or sit there waving you through.
The top down view seems to make this extra confusing:
1. You don't get to see signage that tells you what lane to be in
2. You are forced to take in irrelevant details.
I live a couple of blocks away from this Kirkland roundabout and I drive through it very often -- almost every time I go anywhere. Overall, I like it. My average traversal through the roundabout, for just about any source/destination, seems a bit faster than the pre-roundabout infrastructure and much faster than the temporary so-many-stoplights configuration they had for the past year or two.
I used the roundabout the game is modeled after the other day. This is at the freeway exit used to get to the Costco AND downtown in Kirkland. I've seen pileups here for no reason. It's insane.
To be fair, I'm not sure there's a good solution. The real problem is the volume of traffic and that it dumps onto two lane roads at the edges of this roundabout. To really fix things you need to give people other exits to use.
I drove on this for the first time yesterday, once from 405 S to 85th W, then back on 85th E and 405 N. Super easy, the lanes are fairly nicely signed and there is ample signage. No issues at all.
Have you done the I-90 <-> SR 18 interchange out by Preston yet?
Roundabouts are almost always a bad idea. Thank God they are mostly a European thing.
Roundabouts are almost always a good idea, assuming there is sufficient traffic. They keep traffic flowing faster, more predictably, and with fewer accidents.
No, they just interrupt the flow of traffic by slowing it down. The classic pattern of side roads with less traffic yielding to incoming traffic on the main road carrying more traffic is the correct road layout that minimizes frustration and confusion. Roundabouts are the favorite tool of left-leaning, anti-car, vanilla soy latte-sipping urban planners.
Good to know that I'm getting to my destination faster and more safely all because of woke!
https://www.iihs.org/research-areas/roundabouts#traffic-flow...
Btw your 'classic pattern' of highly unbalanced traffic flows is specifically called out as a non-ideal candidate for a roundabout, maybe the urban planners get cow milk in their lattes after all.
Background music is awesome
I'm assuming these are AI-generated songs... but they're so funny. I think "hilarious songs" is an underrated use of AI. It used to require a lot to make a catchy tune, so we were limited to the output of the few comedians who were talented musicians. But the ability to have a silly theme song of this quality, for a joke game, friend group in-joke, or a company retreat... this is something I like about AI!
I swear if the US could build regular roundabouts, converting an intersection would make the accident rate go down, instead of up.
I was surprised that the U.S. probably only has around 11,000 roundabouts. I thought it would be higher. If they were as popular as they are in my local area, there would be over 70,000 in the U.S.
https://roundabouts.kittelson.com/
They can and do build them.
The problem is that at intersections the normative behavior of American drivers is to queue and wait for your turn. Roundabouts assume a different behavior based on jumping the line.
Thus there is a lot of unpredictability regarding other drivers due to generations of driving patterns developed in diverse regional driving cultures...many of which are distinctly not-urban.
In addition, this roundabout is part of an Interstate Highway interchange. The US Interstate system is at a scale that doesn't occur elsewhere. It is transcontinental.
> The problem is that at intersections the normative behavior of American drivers is to queue and wait for your turn. Roundabouts assume a different behavior based on jumping the line.
I don't think it's that different from turning right on red, or left without an arrow, or even merging on to the highway from an onramp (maybe that's the most similar, traffic in the others aren't flowing the same direction as you).
Perhaps they need to start building more roundabouts on smaller intersections, and improve education in driving schools. Then give it time (decades).
The US has been building roundabouts for about 30 years.
It has a lot of intersections.
Reconfiguring intersections is expensive and disruptive. Stop signs and traffic lights take less space and are often the simplest thing that might work.
From what I understand roundabouts make accident rate go up, it is the severity of accidents that goes down which probably still a positive.
That said I have yet to drive through a roundabout that I think improved an intersection in any meaningful way. Half of them work as intended but I find them less pleasant to drive through, the other half are just horribly designed and often have semitrucks go through them when they aren't really large enough for that.
>From what I understand roundabouts make accident rate go up,
"Studies of intersections in the United States converted from traffic signals or stop signs to roundabouts have found reductions in injury crashes of 72%-80% and reductions in all crashes of 35%-47%"
https://www.iihs.org/research-areas/roundabouts#safety-benef...
> From what I understand roundabouts make accident rate go up, it is the severity of accidents that goes down which probably still a positive.
That's the argument I keep hearing, but I'm not sure I buy it. Fewer people might be injured physically but even low speed accidents can cost thousands in repairs if not total your car, so going from a few people being hurt a year to multiple people losing their cars or being forced to pay out thousands every few weeks doesn't seem like a win to me.
Just shared a relevant video for anyone interested: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48565808
The new 85th St & I-405 interchange is horrible. I took it twice and both times it's too stressful and takes much longer to get off 405.
Not a joke, actual roundabout.
https://wsdot.wa.gov/construction-planning/search-projects/i...
Love it, you’ve got to do 132nd street next. Trying to exit south bound during rush hour is delightful
I love this roundabout, we live down the street from it. People around here drive comically bad, mostly from what i suspect is simple inexperience (many new drivers), with a surprising side of entitlement (super rich area). Together, its become my favorite experience to see all the ways people fail to navigate this wild "roundabout".
And yet it still mostly works, and is loads faster than the former lights that were there before, so i suspect it will be a success in most eyes once everyone adapts.
For additional fun, check out the sticker price on this intersection overhaul (which includes much more than the round about).
"time for bed" said Zebedee.
I'm a huge roundabout fan, but this does indeed look nasty. Seattle area driving in general is pretty bad. There's an exit on the 5 in downtown Seattle that's on the far left lane (Seneca street I believe) that feels like putting your life on the line every time you need to take it.
There are multiple left lane exits (and onramps!) on I5 in downtown Seattle. Fun times.
Bonus points if you’ve found all the express lane on ramps.
Hilariously great
In my town of Shrewsbury PA we have a diverging diamond traffic pattern(it's sorta like a figure 8). I have no issue with it tho I have seen a car accident or two there. Roundabouts are simple and so is the diverging diamond.
The basic failure mode I would expect:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeFY9u69tkE
The adjoining roads have a large speed differential. The runoff areas around this project do not appear as if designed with this in mind. I predict a few horrible accidents and some hamfisted redesigns.
The local news has a ground level view of this project:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/jlPMB7c0RyQ
Your first link is hilarious. 1:38 features a tow truck wiping out. You'd think he'd seen enough people get in trouble to make him drive better!