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Any interchange where I live is a major thoroughfare. Interchanges are too expensive to waste on lightly traveled roads.
As to what constitutes heavy traffic, I suppose it is relative. I live in a highly built up area of about 2 million people. While Salt Lake and the Wasatch Front are similar in population to the Indianapolis metropolitan area, we are squeezed by mountains, the Great Salt Lake and Utah Lake, into a narrow corridor. Add in an almost pathological disregard for planning and that leaves us with horrendous rush hours.
UDOT has been very aggressive in testing innovative solutions to traffic flow. The Detroit left turn is probably the worst and it has only been used in a couple of spots that I have found so far. They tried the Displaced Left-Turn Intersection (also called the Mexican left turn because it was first used in Mexico City.) about 15 years ago and have become quite fond of it.
It takes some getting used to and it is very frustrating when you forget to get in the turn lane. They time the lights well so there is no wait after the first light turns green, unless you floor it.
Roundabouts are found in slower, lightly used secondary roads and they usually work quite well.
There is a roundabout in my wife's city, Guayaquil, Ecuador. It is at a bottleneck and was a major nightmare, and that was before the traffic got really bad after they dropped the heavy tariff on automobiles back in the 90's. They have since built around it, though I don't know how the improvements have fared through the earthquakes the past couple of months.
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