The Michigan Left

[Seperallis]

Except that in the past couple of years, MDOT has started to move towards more roundabouts. We have two in Kalamazoo, they're putting in a third, Mattawan  has two and one on M-43 between Kalamazoo and South Haven. Problem is, no one around here knows how to use them yet so they have caused more problems than they solved.

If the people know the driving manual they allegedly read when they went in to get their license, they should know how to use them. We don't blame guns for the terrible acts of ignorant gun owners, do we?

I love roundabouts. I feel they're the greatest traffic invention of all time...except for, you know, the paved road. Totally being subjective of course. They do have a wonderful way of making dangerous 4-way stops safer. I forget where, but some stop here in SC in some town somewhere was notorious for people just ignoring the stop and blowing through it; needless to say, that intersection had a lot of traffic deaths every year. They installed a roundabout some years ago, and both accidents have dropped dramatically and there hasn't been a single death...because even if there is an accident, they're having to slow down for the roundabout enough that people don't get hurt.

I mainly like them because it saves gas and commute time to not have to come to a full stop at a 4-way that has no traffic.

Poorly designed ones have problems. Another roundabout somewhere down here pissed truckers off all the time because it wasn't designed to accommodate a truck towing a 54' container trailer, so they had to take the long way around that intersection on their routes. I think they fixed it relatively recently, adding a paved section inside the driving lane for truck trailers to hop onto if needed.