The 12 o'clock rule is hard to follow when you're looking for a certain road and don't know what the clocking location is. The signs don't say road names until the exit. Also, what's the rule for roads directly at 12 o'clock? You have before and after, but not straight through.
Roundabouts are just a yield to traffic on the roundabout, but that concept doesn't seem to translate to people too well, at least in my area. It's getting a little better, but a lot of the time people will stop even when there's no traffic. In driver's ed we were taught a yield sign is like a rolling stop, you slow down check for traffic but a full stop isn't required, might be part of why people drive that way, that or they don't know what yield means because it's a pretty uncommon sign to see on the road here. When there's slip lanes and such on the roundabout, it can get even more confusing for out of town drivers.
I probably should mention, I'm not 100% against roundabouts, in some situations they can replace stop lights and do a good job, but the local roads in my areas, roundabouts were used instead of just adding a simple turn lane. It would have required making the bridge wider, or making the on/off ramps farther away from the bridge, so all options I'm sure were expensive to do. In higher traffic area's there's normally two on ramps you can turn onto, and depending on which direction you're going on the road, you use the on ramp that's to the right which generally has a dedicated turn lane. I'll grab some pics of the setup up town. There's one stop light that backs up fairly bad, but they have a million businesses along each side just up the road and a ton of top lights. They really needed like a service drive for all of the businesses, and keep the main road cleared up more so traffic can flow better.
Major road into the area that has all the businesses is north and south in the pic, the businesses are to the north. Express way is east and west, the lane going to the right is the on ramp for traffic heading north for east bound.
Here's a bit farther north on the other side of the bridge, there's a right turn lane for west bound traffic for traffic going north.
For traffic heading south, the lane closest to the express way is the westbound on ramp, the other is a different road. There's a dedicated right turn lane there.
Now for the traffic heading south but want to go eastbound is where things get weird, back at that traffic light that I mentioned backs up pretty bad, they have to take a right there and drive around a 1/2 mile for the on ramp. Being a local it's not bad, but I'm sure someone from out of the area would be nice and confused. It does have signs showing where to go though.
Here's kind of an overview of that area of town. To the right all of those businesses are on service drives, but I think there's too many spots to turn. There's a bunch of businesses on the left side that has their driveway right to the main road, lots of them are in horrible locations (right next to an intersection for example).
The service drive concept that I have in mind is more like a giant roundabout but 2 lane traffic.
The main road going north and south has a speed limit of 45mph, but most of the time the traffic only goes around 30-35mph and the lights aren't timed for that. There's also a ton of stop lights for each of the major drives on the right side, I think it's 4 north of the bridge, then the 1 south of the bridge. I suspect another way to go about it is make that whole town section a giant 2 lane roundabout. Traffing going to the right service drives in right lane, left side of the road would be left lane, but there's also a fair bit of traffic that are heading out of town. It would need right turn lanes on the round about so people don't have to slow down as much. There's a lot of people that nearly stop to make a turn in my area, there's also some people that like to make barn yard turns 1.5-2 lanes wide.
Here's my 2006 prius, it has drums in the back. You can see the Michigan cancer trying to take over (rust).
I also have a 2009 prius, also has drums in the back and it's a higher trim package (keyless entery and such). It's pretty rusty kind of hard to see it in the photo. I think the drums might be slightly bigger on the 2009 too.
My 2004 Toyota Matrix also has rear drum, it had real good brakes too like the prius. I think I'm pretty sold on keeping the Prius, big time with gas prices being up, so I should probably get the matrix cleaned up and ready to sell some time.
Those are the newest vehicles I have, I've always driven 90's era vehicles and a touch into the 2000's like 2000-2001 era. Cars are generally cheap, insurance cheap, features aren't overboard with the junk I don't want, and the models I go for are known to be reliable, and clearly I try to go for ones with better mpg abilities. I kind of miss my 97 corolla, but I was always wishing it was a hatch back since I used it about like a little truck.