The roundabouts are coming! The roundabouts are coming! They’re at I-64 and Spoede Road, there are three in Forest Park (which work excellently by the way), and now one’s coming to Delmar in University City. At nextSTL we’ve detected a little apphrehension about roundabouts, or rather the average Missourian’s ability to safely navigate them. In our mind, there’s not much of a debate. That doesn’t mean there isn’t an education issue when they are introduced. And so here are nine instructional videos that all tackle how to safely navigate a roundabout. Don’t let the fact there are multi-lane roundabouts and traffic circles (a different beast, but also very cool) confuse you. In St. Louis we’re focused on the single-lane variety.
Oh, and for a quick visual of why roundabouts are safer in concept, here’s an image showing the number of conflict points for vehicles and pedestrians for a traditional intersection and a roundabout. It’s worth adding that all vehicle conflict points in a roundabout occur where two vehicles are moving in the same general direction, meaning there are no head-on conflicts, only more glancing blows (resulting in drastically less severe injuries) when cars do collide.
Renderings of possible Delmar roundabout at Trinity:
Video of navigating the temporary roundabout:
