German Town Scraps Road Signs to Increase Safety

[Daox]

I just found this. Its a bit old, but is interesting. A German town has gotten rid of all road signs and traffic lights. The idea being that you now have to pay more attention to what is going on. Not too surprisingly, it works!

German Town Scraps Road Signs to Increase Safety : TreeHugger

[gone-ot]

...but, I kinda believe it's more a case of "...fewer idiots = fewer accidents..."

[RobertSmalls]

I have a feeling it would hurt the MPG. Every four way intersection becomes like four yield signs. Fine if all you have is roundabouts, but what happens when a minor road intersects a major road? Nobody knows, and everybody slows to 5mph.

[gone-ot]

...one of the towns here north of Tucson just recently installed one of those "round-abouts" on a fairly heavily traveled secondary road with VERY interesting results!

...no true "accidents" yet, but there are literally hundreds of black skid marks on ALL four of the approaching roads and marks ALL over both the "center" and "outside" curbings...because what USED to be an almost 'square' intersection is NOW an 'outside' circular loop...sorta like having to make a righthand turn to make a lefthand exit...duh!

[Laurentiu]

I read this or probably similar news a while ago. Putting more responsibility on the driver does work sometimes and roundabouts are really helpful. I see in many European countries roundabouts are replacing 4-way intersections. I like the last paragraph...about the guns

I like the idea of turbo roundabouts..where you can turn right

[ShadeTreeMech]

I've only ever seen and driven on one roundabout in person, and loved it. I thought it was so much fun I drove around it a couple times, to the excitement of my nephews.

Unlike the UK variant, this one had a central island that was full of vegetation and concrete, making going through the center inmpossible.

[Laurentiu]

some statistics from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS):

Q&As: Roundabouts

Have a look at number 7 especially:

[alvaro84]

Originally Posted by Laurentiu

I read this or probably similar news a while ago. Putting more responsibility on the driver does work sometimes and roundabouts are really helpful. I see in many European countries roundabouts are replacing 4-way intersections.

In Hungary in the last decade or so they replace more and more intersections with roundabouts. I, personally, like them (especially when I'd like to turn around for some reason), they mostly work well (except that many drivers don't use their turn signals as they would have to), but 2-lane roundabouts are really problematic, very few drivers use the inner lane because they're afraid of getting stuck because of those who want to turn left yet choose to stay in the outer lane for that 3/4 turn (because they're afraid of getting stuck in the inner lane, and so on, and so on...) - this is why those 'turbo' roundabouts have been invented. They're pretty rare here at the moment, and I haven't seen any of them yet, but I'm really curious. They should work well. Especially when people get used to them (I've heard that some get confused when they meet them).

On a sidenote, once I met a driver going in the wrong direction in a roundabout, just in front of me. It was quite an appalling experience

[Piwoslaw]

Originally Posted by alvaro84

but 2-lane roundabouts are really problematic, very few drivers use the inner lane because they're afraid of getting stuck because of those who want to turn left yet choose to stay in the outer lane for that 3/4 turn (because they're afraid of getting stuck in the inner lane, and so on, and so on...)

Same here. Multilane roundabouts work only if they have traffic lights. There is a huge threelaner being built close to me, lights will be installed in a few months, for now there is a collision every 2-3 days. I can't wait to drive through a turbo

Originally Posted by alvaro84

On a sidenote, once I met a driver going in the wrong direction in a roundabout, just in front of me. It was quite an appalling experience

The first and only time I almost had a head-on collision on a roundabout was in Romania last year. That got my adrenaline going!!

[Laurentiu]

Originally Posted by Piwoslaw

The first and only time I almost had a head-on collision on a roundabout was in Romania last year. That got my adrenaline going!!

Was it in Bucharest by any chance ?


Here's few photos of the wonderful free flowing traffic of Bucharest..



The "Magic Roundabout" in Swindon/England is quite mind-boggling...


For real adrenaline though, have to go to places like Sao Paolo, Brazil, any mega-city in Asia, Moscow...too bad we don't have any "comrade" from Russia to tell us tales from Moscow's streets
World’s Worst Intersections & Traffic Jams | Pictures