A place where traffic slows down, without actually stopping, and becomes congested with no time/space gaps between vehicles, is worse for pedestrians.

> becomes congested with no time/space gaps between vehicles, is worse for pedestrians

Why? This feels like it's assuming pedestrians share the street with vehicles, but besides the US and some other places, don't most "modern" countries have separate pavements/streets for pedestrians? Besides in the country-side, vehicles and pedestrians don't generally share the road in populated areas here in Spain. For crossing roads outside cities, building a pedestrian tunnel below or a bridge above seems to preferred here, except in the cases where it isn't possible, and in cities obviously.

In my city in Norway, at least, there is never a traffic pattern where it's not either:

* a small roundabout with really clear pedestrian right of way marked

* a pedestrian path that takes you over or under the road instead of crossing it

It's great!

There used to be an epidemic of cars striking and killing pedestrians. The advertising industry (hired by the auto industry) came up with the new imaginary crime called "jaywalking". This diverted attention from the killers and onto the victims. Just one more version of the victim blaming that derives from the Just World Hypothesis.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_fallacy

> Why? This feels like it's assuming pedestrians share the street with vehicles, but besides the US and some other places, don't most "modern" countries have separate pavements/streets for pedestrians?

Surely this is a joke or just a flimsy pretext to imply that murka bad or whatever.

Even with a fully paved and sidewalked roundabout (or intersection of any other type) the more of a clusterfuck it is the less time and attention any given traffic participant has to give any other traffic participant is and this is where you get all the stupid "idiots trying to pass each other in a hallway" type misunderstandings and whatnot. It's just better for everyone if things aren't a clusterfuck.

Right, you're talking about "traffic participant", are you including pedestrians or not? Because as I said, in many places, "vehicles" and "pedestrians" are well-separated and don't impact/affect each other, so not sure what cluster-fuck could be created there. Seems less of a cluster-fuck than relying on cross-walks and stop-lights?

>Right, you're talking about "traffic participant", are you including pedestrians or not?

Yes, the point of nonspecific language is in fact to be non-specific and apply to all. If I meant pedestrians I would have said that.

>Because as I said, in many places, "vehicles" and "pedestrians" are well-separated and don't impact/affect each other, so not sure what cluster-fuck could be created there. Seems less of a cluster-fuck than relying on cross-walks and stop-lights?

This is exactly the sort of garbage take the first sentence of my comment was made to apply to. Even the richest places with the most investment in traffic segregation still have a lot of cross walks and signals.

I feel more sorry for you than anything, I hope you get to discover the rest of the world as many of us done so far, I'm sure you'll get an opportunity in the future! Good luck.

Posting like this will get you banned here. If you'd please review the site rules and stick to them, we'd appreciate it:

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Posting like this will get you banned here. If you'd please review the site rules and stick to them, we'd appreciate it:

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

The traffic has to yield to pedestrians when entering and exiting a roundabout, period.

Not in UK.

However there are often pedestrian crossings across the roads or the volume is low enough pedestrians can easily cross. A local roundabout got busy enough we had crossing added less than 10 years ago and the biggest road there was a minor B road.

I am a pedestrian due to sight issues and have found very few places where it is difficult to cross when needed.

The "when needed" suggests that there are plenty of difficulty to cross intersections, you're just able to avoid them. Is that accurate?

No it just means I can't remeber any at the moment – but I am, dure some can be found.

This is true if you can alter the properties of the physically existent universe, else it is not true, and, indeed, drivers do not even slow down largely because they feel frustrated when traveling along a road with a 45 MPH speed limit at an average speed of 20 MPH.

No it isn't unless all driver all break the law and don't stop for waiting pedestrians.

That's a thing that happens.

But then, how come you blame this on the existence of roundabouts and not on the lawlessness of drivers?

Because driver compliance with red traffic lights is far, far higher than compliance with pedestrian right-of-way rules.

And the reason is obvious: when the driver runs the law of the red light, they run into a law of physics (cross traffic).

> […] is worse for pedestrians.

Some data seems to conflict with this:

> A 1993 study in the Netherlands examined collision experience at 181 intersections converted to roundabouts. Pedestrian collisions (all injury severities) dropped 73% and pedestrian casualties dropped 89%.

> Evaluations in Sweden concluded that single-lane roundabouts are very safe for pedestrians, at about a 78% reduction in injuries, and that multi-lane roundabouts are about as safe as other intersections.

> A 2002 study of collision experience at the roundabouts in Park City, Vail, West Vail and Avon, Colorado, showed 2 pedestrian crashes prior to the roundabouts operating with over 164 million vehicle movements, compared to 1 pedestrian crash with roundabouts experiencing over 282 million vehicle movements.

* https://www.tac-atc.ca/wp-content/uploads/weber.pdf

> With the installation of a roundabout, this study finds that the before-after analysis results in a 40% decrease in all severity injury crashes for all roadway users, a 70% decrease in fatal and serious injury crashes for bikes and pedestrians, and a 15% decrease in total pedestrian bike and pedestrian crashes.

* https://mdl.mndot.gov/items/202336

OK, so "worse for pedestrians" boils down to a statistic about body hits. If you are not struck, you are not having a worse pedestrian experience. My bad!

It can be a good thing. But I've seen many roundabouts in the US (specifically in the state of Wisconsin) where someone decided to put a roundabout on a major rural highway that was crossed by a side road. In that case there is no sense in having the 60mph traffic stop just for an occasional car crossing or turning. The side road should have a stop sign while the main road flows unimpeded.

The new roundabout completely prevents fatality t-bone crashes into people turning left from those stop signs, which has likely happened multiple times at that very intersection thus prompting the road to be redesigned.