Roundabouts

Simply The Best! By far, the best junction interface, in most instances, is the roundabout. Roundabouts are efficient at all times of day and night and allow drivers to use their common sense. They allow vehicles to merge and integrate efficiently, adjusting approach speeds where necessary to integrate smoothly. Roundabouts do not hold people up or force people to stop unnecessarily. There is also no inherent phase lag, as there is with controlled lighting schemes. Unfortunately, many decent roundabouts have been ruined in recent times by local authorities putting traffic lights on them. This completely invalidates the efficiency of the roundabout and causes various additional problems, such as additional congestion, logjams, lane-jockeying, near-misses and road traffic collisions.

In Some Places: Mini roundabouts are good at key junctions, where a higher processing requirement is evident. However, local authorities have had a tendency to use mini roundabouts in unsuitable places, not for junction management, but for traffic calming. This misguided application has resulted in as result. Normal junctions that work perfectly well should be left as they are. The application of mini roundabouts in such unsuitable locations leads to confusion and more accidents and near-misses.

Mini Roundabouts - Councils' Confusing Priorities! Mini roundabouts work very well in many places, but in recent years we have seen local authorities implementing them in unsuitable locations in their attempts to implement more 'traffic calming'. The application of such mini roundabouts in these unsuitable locations causes confusion for motorists and has given rise to an increase in accidents and near misses. Mini roundabouts are primarily a junction management system and not a traffic calming measure. Yes, they do have a traffic calming effect, but they should not primarily be used for that alone in locations where a roundabout is not the best junction management solution. It is both dangerous and a waste of public money.