Saturday 5th May 2018

Prior Convictions: Merry-Go-Round

Prior's been in America this week driving electric cars. So guess what's on his mind? Yep, roundabouts.

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This is an ode to the roundabout. Yeah, I know. But go with it.

Maybe like you, I don't think about roundabouts that often, other than actually how to circumnavigate one when I'm circumnavigating it. It's just a part of daily life. I rather take them for granted.

But like having a back that works properly, or having a thumb that definitely doesn't have a paper cut right on the end of it, you're quickly aware if that situation changes.

I've just spent a two days in the USA. (I know. Get me.) And they don't very often do roundabouts there, except rarely, and in quiet, out of the way places. In two days, I saw two.

In their place, then, they have junctions. Crossroads. Straight bits instead of round bits, with controlled entry.

This is either via 'four-way stop' junctions - whoever got to the crossroads first gets to go first, after coming to a complete standstill - or traffic lights. I've spent untold minutes stationary, unnecessarily, at both.

The Americans get lots of things right - V8s, burgers, wide open spaces and the permission to use it - but I'm afraid we have them nailed when it comes to junctions.

The roundabout is a brilliant invention. Even the 'magic roundabout', several mini-roundabouts joined together, as you'll find in Swindon and Hemel Hempstead, is a marvel. I know they get some stick, but I can't think of another system that would deal with the quantity of cars that join from the sheer number of adjoining roads as deftly as Hemel's Plough roundabout does.

But more than that: they also create the compulsion to make cars steer accurately, they make a low centre of gravity useful. They are a way to experience a corner.

Maybe that's why the US doesn't have so many. There are lots of great back roads in the US. But its towns and highways are places of long, wide pavement, made for muscle cars, big trucks, RVs and trailers, with driveway ramps that must make supercar owners very adept at fitting new front splitters.

I often think you can tell a lot about a country's roads - a country's geography - by the nature of its cars. French cars used to ride lopingly on ruffled country lanes, German cars are intensely stable at high speeds, and Japanese sports cars are light and agile because their back roads suit it.

American sports cars and muscle cars are not worse for being full of woofly goodness, great between sets of lights and riding broken concrete. It'd be a shame if they weren't.

But, stopping for the nth time at a four-way junction, or for the green light to go left at a set of crossroads, you don't half realise that they'd get places quicker if they used more roundabouts.

Unless, that is, like us, they put traffic lights on them even when they're not busy. But don't get me started on those.

[Ozerob]

Come to Adelaide, another largely roundabout free zone, but we have main roads with traffic light controlled 4 way junctions every 400 metres.
A great way to waste petrol.