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Stamets @lemmy.world

2d ago

It aint that hard, fuck wits

Texas @lemmy.world

FenrirIII @lemmy.world

2d ago

My fellow Texans, It ain't that hard

229 comments

And the whole set of problems only exist because there are too many cars.

Broke: Car C is being a responsible, safety focused driver
Woke: Car C is holding up traffic for no good reason
Bespoke: Car Pink is whipping around that turn at 80 kmph and going to kill everyone anyone, so don't sweet it.
- Just go right over the center and see if you can clear C and D.

Wait until you see the magic roundabout in the UK. It's a "close your eyes, pray and hit the gas" type of place.
- I've seen this so often before and I still don't understand why they didn't just build an ordinary roundabout. It's just six roads that meet there. That's not beyond ordinary roundabout capabilities. Who said "you know what, let's just do a circular arrangement of five roundabouts here, that's so much better than what people are used to"?
  
  My money is on "the french love roundabouts so we're not doing that"
- That roundabout needs a speaker constantly playing Entry of the Gladiators on repeat
- No one will ever be able to invade the UK, they'll get stuck in this horror.
- Then you see the cars completely ignoring the sub-circles and driving over them or backwards to the arrows.
- It's really five regular roundabouts circling one central roundabout.
- People will unironically see this and proclaim that it's actually not that complicated...
- Holy hell
- Left side driving should be illegal
  
  It is in the most places on earth.
- I drove through that one, not easy. I prefer the turbine design we use in Germany.

Car C is really just waiting for the pink car to arrive so that they can slam the gas as soon as it does.

I knew a girl who was instructed to turn left at a roundabout, so she proceeded to turn left when merging into the roundabout.
Poor girl, fortunately everything was fine (she did fail, but no accidents) but that's a special kind of 'too literal' that loops back around to being dumb.
- And that's why turn-by-turn navigation systems phrase it as "take the third exit from the roundabout" these days.
  
  One of the work trucks used to have one that said "Go straight through the roundabout". It was pretty tempting sometimes to take it at its word...

Replace the pink car with a bicycle an A is suddenly not being in the mood to yield anymore.
I was going straight once and had to go back in and do a full turn (180° + 360°) because of that.
- All cars will yield to a bicycle in the UK, because less protected members of the road traffic always take priority.
  
  All cars should yield.
  When I used to cycle, I'd just go on the pavements at large roundabouts. Not much point in being right but dead.
  
  Welp, I'm not in the UK.
  Over here, people go with - what is the most threatening to themselves - and it really feels weird that people who have presumably passed the driving exam are worse at roundabouts than me.
- I'm a daily cyclist and I think I'd be terrified to bike through a full roundabout. They're absolutely marvelous designs for throughput that doesn't require complex signal automation, but the flip side of that is they're pretty hostile if you're not a motor vehicle. Any truly good roundabout design should include pedestrian and cycle paths along the periphery that have priority when crossing the circles entrances.

The hard part is when back to back traffic for 15 miles worth of cars is coming from one direction and everyone else is either too scared to zipper merge or they allow the one direction to have perpetual right of way.
At some point of heavy traffic, the circle right of way must yield for zipper merging, else face my ass aggro merging and beeping at everyone who doesn't.

When I have a Car D behind me, it's because they overestimate my car's acceleration capabilities.

The lion does not concern himself with car C. Car D should plough straight through them.

As the circle enlarges, the system approaches four T-intersections. What I want to know is: at what size circle to people lose their minds and become unable to comprehend how T-intersections work.
Fair play to people confused about multi-lane roundabouts though.

ITT: People road raging over imaginary traffic.
- Drivers seem to love complaining about drivers

Not everybody is cut out to drive (i.e. to operate dangerous heavy machinery in a fast-changing environment with others depending on you handling the situation correctly). The problem is when we structure our societies requiring everyone to do so to participate.
- requiring everyone to do so to participate.
  Bus, taxi, bike, walk, whatever.
  I vehemently disagree that everyone has a 'right' to have a license, as so many argue.
  
  That infrastructure is majorly lacking if you live in the US.
  
  They never said that everybody has a right to drive. The reality is that, at least in the US and similarly planned countries, cars are priced like a luxury and treated like a necessity by the powers that be. Anything that isn't driving a car is an afterthought.
  
  This is what I do. It is not a universal solution. You are sugar coating your answer by leaving out the final option that makes it universal: give up.
  My partner wants to be a social worker. They are quite talented in their profession and help a lot of people. They are not a good driver and it would be better for everyone if they did not have to drive. However, you cannot do the work they do unless you own a car, have a valid license, and are willing to drive around. The choice offered to them is: drive poorly, or give up your life's ambition.
  @AllNewTypeFace is exactly correct that there is a problem where we have structured society such that everyone is expected to drive, and your comment does not successfully refute that. The problem exists.

Useful, but incomplete.

I'm always the pink car but get cut off by car A who decides to gun it soon as I'm right where pink car is

I hate getting stuck behind the "I won't move until there are no cars anywhere on the planet" drivers.

I mean, nothing here is wrong but I have rarely had C being my primary issue when dealing with roundabouts. Idiots randomly entering the circle with no regard to other cars, THAT I've encountered quite frequently...
- Ah yes, car E driven by Leeeerrroooooyyyy Jenkins
  
  Watching the shadow of the car, it takes out the top of a tree
  
  To the moooooooooooon
- Biggest problem I encounter is people failing to signal their exit
  So I end up being C because I yield to a bunch of bozos who didn’t communicate they were’t going to come my way
  
  Well we can kinda only go when the signal is accompanied by another indication like slowing and or beginning to turn - “never trust a signal” eh?
- The only real problem I regularly encounter is on two lane roundabouts.
  If you want to take the first exit you need to enter in the passenger side lane.
  If you want to take any exit after the second you need to enter in the driver's side lane.
  If you enter in the passenger side lane, you must take the first or second exit. Taking any exit after the second from the "outside" lane is gonna cause an accident.
  I see this happen a few times a year. It's so common that most drivers foresee it.
  
  Yeah the solution there is spiral roundabouts with hard barriers at critical points.
- That's because Americans don't know how to use them, once you live in a place where people use them OPs picture becomes your issue and you never see yours.
  
  Americans have a hard time driving, period. They can’t “keep right unless passing”, they can’t understand 4-way stops, they can’t understand traffic circles, and so much more. So frustrating and dangerous here.
  
  I think that's location specific, I've lived in a few different places in the US that had roundabouts, although I've always called em rotaries in the northeast.
  
  My city (US) used to have one that was signed all wrong, so cars already inside the circle would have to yield to the ones entering. Naturally this led to congestion instead of flowing traffic. Also it was way too close to a tangential road so that made things even worse because the backed up traffic on that side then affected cars that weren't even going to the circle.
  Fortunately they ripped that shit out and redesigned the entire intersection.
- Or badly designed ones with a combo of yield and stop signs that effectively prevent the people with the stop sign from ever proceeding
- Hit them

Those small green pissing pyramids are blocking the road.

My favorite is when the pink car stops to allow car 'A' to go 🙃
- Some larger roundabouts work that way. Most (in)famously the arc de triomphe in Paris.
  Where I live there are two of these
- "if I randomly stop in the middle of the road so another car can get in, the car right behind me probably won't hit me"
  
  Cyclist here.
  Someone did that for me, so I tried to rush across the street to not hold up traffic.
  Woke up a few weeks later in physical rehab, not remembering anything because of the TBI. Evidently I was in the hospital for about three weeks. No recollection!
  
  I will take predictable drivers over ‘nice’ drivers any day.
- Oh God I love that its just so hulaeuosly dumb when it happens
  I just put my hands in the air and yell at them
- Bus drivers have entered the chat.

Alternative scenario: C starts entering, A decides to FUCKING FLOOR IT, slams into C

C is yielding to a pedestrian, but carbrain D cannot fathom yielding to anything smaller than their car.
- I've been car A and still had car D behind me beep at me. We hate car D.
- There's no pedestrian in the image.
  Cars are bad enough as it is that we don't have to imagine more problems with them.
- Were this a 2 lane roundabout, car d would be changing lanes to bypass car c, nearly striking that pedestrian
  
  Pedestrian crossing without traffic lights at a 2 lane roundabout entry? That's just murderous design.
  
  It took me three attempts to parse
  We’re this a 2 lane roundabout,
  Your mistake is even harder to type than the correct ‘Were’!
- Pedestrian would be safer crossing somewhere with a pedestrian crossing
- A pedestrian would cross between C and D, or even behind D.

I love roundabouts as a driver and as a pedestrian. I do admit that the double laned ones can feel like an utter cluster at times though
- you aught to try the kind that’s 3 lanes going to 5 different places and a tram running through the middle!
  (this was the most dangerous intersection in my city for a while… they’ve added traffic lights… i do also very much love roundabouts)
- Yeah I'm a fan.
  My city has no traffic lights. Roundabouts everywhere. It's not a particularly big city.
  There are some problems but in general I think everyone gets where they're going a lot quicker.
- I have The Perfect Round-A-Bout for you.
  It's insane. It's also brilliant.
- Gotta be aggressive for those

I'm always D
- etermined to keep my head up high, but it gets hard when I’m deep in a
  
  cult

You’re all driving around it in the wrong direction.
- But they are on the right side.
  
  No, that’s the wrong side

Wheres the fighter jet?

Then there is this cluster fuck of a roundabout in my city Lansing, MI. Yes they do have a full STOP sign at each entrance to the roundabout for the crosswalk not just a stop for pedestrians which would make more sense. So you have to stop then yield to circle traffic then go. The entire roundabout is useless because once you stop you lose the benefit.
- Roundabouts are not just for efficiency, they are for safety. A regular 4-way intersection introduces multiple conflicts between cars turning left and cars coming from the opposite direction.
  A roundabout only has one conflict for each connecting street, and the right of way is clearly defined.
  
  They also change the angle of impacts to be less severe since they should effectively eliminate a t-bone type impact.
- None of you guys would survive Iran
  
  I heard you like roundabouts so i put a roubdabout in your roundabout
  
  Or several gnarly roundabouts in the UK
- the sequel to Michigan left
- Those crosswalks are too close to the circle, move that back and remove the stop signs.
  
  The roundabout that I cross every day to go to work has the crosswalk even closer.
- That’s a traffic circle, they all suck.

My country is full of donkeys driving cars
- Damn, how'd you train a donkey to drive?
  
  Who said anything about training?

Ive had the 'pink' car stop in the roundabout and motion, me as the 'A' car, to go. Like i dont even anymore.
- Just give the one finger salute.
- There are specific times when this might be appropriate. For example if I am turning off at the exit after where the car is joining from, I can see they're indicating to making a move around the inner part of the roundabout which is clear, and if I proceeded I would join a queue for my exit and block them. I'll usually stop short and gesture they move in.
  But otherwise it's usually safer all round to stick to the rules.
  
  I've never seen a roundabout with a queue

E. Pink car turned turn signal on before entering the circle, keeps turn signal on all the way around the circle, thus invalidating any method of informing other drivers of which exit they intend to use. Car E deserves rapid unplanned orthodontics.
- Signals are helpful indicators, but I rarely commit until I see someone's front wheel change direction.
  You're probably already watching people's wheels without realising. It's the first real tell.

C may be right to yield depending on where pink and yellow are going and the speed they're doing.
- this just here, we don't have many roundabouts but, the amount of drivers who think it's a race to get from point a to point b is unreasonable. I'm not about to enter the roundabout as car c if the pink or yellow car is flying with no indicators.
- C has plenty of space to be out of the way before pink and yellow can catch up to it.
  
  It's a small roundabout and it's prudent to wait a second to see what they're doing. Being impatient isn't a good trait when driving.
  
  Not if they’re moving quickly and not signalling their intent.

I remember almost hitting a cop in a roundabout somewhere in my city because they didn't follow the rules. It's a double-wide roundabout, where the outer ring must make the first right they come to and only the inner ring can continue forward or make a right. I needed to make a right from the inner lane, the cop was in the outer lane and DIDN'T TAKE THE EXIT, and I almost turned into the asshole, expecting him to turn like he was supposed to.
- ACAB
  All Circles Are Beyond-my-ability-to-comprehend - the cop probably
- US. Which is probably the number 1 reason for this bonehead move; roundabouts are like unicorns here. Not only that, but they often are done in ways that are extremely stupid and often vary from one town to another so that there is no consistency in the rules. They would be the smoothest, fastest form of an intersection if they were consistent and encountered enough that people learned how to properly utilize them.

Turnabout fucking sucks.
Way more go wrong than lights, increase car to car interactions massively, inappropriate european fad. This for place that don't mind getting bog down doing more than an hour to get 50km away because they don't have important things to do
- Traffic circles are safer, reduce maintenance costs, slows the fucking speeders and more efficient than your fucking stop sign and signal intersections.
  
  Mfs don't even stop at stop signs anymore, they just slowly crawl and go. It's like the overuse of the stop signs made them into a fancy yeild sign.
- I'll just put this here so people can actually get som real info and not the nonsense you are spewing.
  
  error i'm getting:
  You don't have permission to access "http://www.weforum.org/stories/2021/12/roundabouts-save-more-lives-than-traffic-lights/" on this server.
- Better than 4-way stop signs, fuck that noise.

There's one "roundabout" that I know of that doesn't have this sign:
But instead has a few of these in the middle:
You HAVE TO give way to the right while driving on the "roundabout".
Mental.
Thanks for your time.
- These idiotic roundabouts used to be everywhere in France. Most of them have been converted to inside-has-right-of-way but a few of the old ones still exist, with traffic lights on the inside.
  
  I guess in low traffic areas it's alright. Anything else is just madness.
- That’s called a “rotary”.

I love how the meme assumes everyone trusts everyone else's driving. Utopian ideals, man.
- That's not how roundabouts work. They're really simple:
  Look left and enter when clear
  Look straight until you exit
  That's it. This only gets complicated if traffic is backed up, in which case everyone is going slow enough for it to not matter.
  
  Nice, I don't know why, but I was picturing the pink car going fast enough to squeal their tires like they used to in the one nearest where I live. We only got roundabouts here a decade or two ago, so they're still a novelty to most. I don't drive much, as you can probably tell.
- My mom taught me to never trust a turn signal (or lack of one)
- You not following the rules because you assume everyone else isn't following the rules is why no one is following the rules...
  
  I don't follow the rules only because I don't drive at all. Otherwise, yes, you are correct, I don't follow rules which endanger my life. Just weird that way.

F. The more fundamental problem is that these are all cars, not bikes. Fuck cars.
- I'm waiting til it becomes normal for individuals to use old school buses as their commuter vehicles. It's the inevitable destination of the car size war.
- Right, that's the funny thing about roundabouts. They're a marvelous solution to local motor vehicle throughput. That become completely unnecessary if your traffic is anything besides motor vehicles. In fact, for bikes and pedestrians and anyone else who can look at each other eye to eye and even just talk to one another if need be, no signals or signs are necessary at all.
- Well yes, but actually bikes wouldn't even need a roundabout with rules like this in the first place.

Circles are awesome, fight me!

AmeriKan drivers and traffic circles equates to an inefficient cluster fuck. When departing the circle, use your damn turn signal so I can enter!!!

I love in Washington state and honestly have had next to no problems with people in roundabouts. They're pretty common here and people use them as intended. Wherever you are all from, I hope it gets better lol

Ok, now do one where C and A arrive at the same time to an empty roundabout and A still, to this day, thinks they have the right of way. Because why wait a fraction of a second when I can make others wait for a lot longer?
I hate having classes in a classroom with windows pointing to a roundabout because I get to realize how NO ONE seems to do them correctly... (In Spain, for reference)
- Depends on the size of the roundabout. For one big enough they could both join simultaneously and maintain a safe distance, that's fine. If not, if you drive on the left the one on the right has priority and vice versa for the rest of the world.
  In fact it's only a problem if people arrive simultaneously at all junctions, since now there's no person to the right of everyone.
  In this case usually everyone stops (unless one of the cars is a BMW or audi) and then someone will start to move first. After which normal operational rules are restored.
  
  if you drive on the left the one on the right has priority and vice versa for the rest of the world
  Isn't that backwards? US we drive on the right and if 2 people arrive at a stop at the same time you yield to your right, the rules would extrapolate out to the same at a roundabout time, googling and looking at the CA handbook produced squat so the rules might be "fuck it" here, actually
- A does have the right of way over C. And the OP has a quite violent interpretation of transit rules that only make sense if it's a large roundabout with a low speed.
  Also, the pink car has the right of way over both. Both are quite right at stopping there, and D is invited to keep stressing themselves to death.
  Now, if the pink car decided to stop and wait for A, then it maybe is worth pointing it to them.
  
  I got my driver's license pretty recently and in driving classes I was always told to look at the left first to see if anyone is inside the roundabout, and then to the right to see if I have to let someone go before me (on small roundabouts). Think it from a logical standpoint: A wouldn't even need to completely stop to let C in first, while, if A goes first, C needs to stop and wait while A passes in front of them.
  It may be a new rule, because no one seems to know about it (or pay it any mind).

I get in and out of those roundabouts as fast as possible
I don't mind the design, I think they're great and save time and reduce traffic congestion
I just don't trust drivers of this generation to use them properly. We are currently in a transition period of generations ... an older generation of drivers that didn't grow up with these and a newer group who will think these roundabouts will be normal. As long as these old timers (including me) are around, these traffic situations will be dangerous.
Which is why, when I get to these roundabouts, I get in as quickly as possible and get out as quickly as I can

Wait until you find out about the French rules of roundabouts.
- I had a good laugh standing on top of the Arc de Triomphe watching four/five/six 🤷 chaotic lanes of traffic swirl around it. And then a gendarme turned up and started pulling people over for no apparent reason - it was wild.
  Video from some Czech tourists: https://youtu.be/-2RCPpdmSVg
  
  Hoooly shit I hate regular roundabouts but this is just another level

D car should be honking
- I feel as if I am the only one in my city with a horn, it's ridiculous.
  There is a light where you are not allowed to turn left because it blocks everyone behind you and oncoming traffic is too dense to actually make the turn, so there is a sign indicating no left turns, and a green arrow for the light, indicating that you may only go straight. Yet people will sit here for an entire light cycle waiting to take an illegal left turn and no one behind them honks. I just don't understand it.
  I feel no guilt in holding my horn down until they get out of everyone's way.
  
  Gotta be careful in some places youll get shot at for honking

I am car C. I don't care if car D is pissed at me, because I have autism and driving is overwhelming for me. I'm being extra cautious because it takes me longer to process sensory input because I can't filter out the irrelevant things. Plus, I always make sure to check the crosswalks. I as a pedestrian have come very close to being hit while crossing multiple times and it seems most other drivers don't give a shit about pedestrians at all.
- This is no excuse. If sensory issues make it difficult for you to drive correctly, then you should not be driving at all.
  
  Can't speak for other nations, but driving is pretty much mandatory in most parts of the U.S. And the parts that have good transit and/or walkability are also the more expensive areas. Our car-centric infrastructure is very ableist.
  They say that driving is a privilege. But not having to drive is also a privilege.
  
  Because our society has widely available public transit and pedestrian/biking options, of course there is no overwhelming pressure to drive to be able to hold down a job and purchase food. /s
  
  on the one hand, fuck you for your gatekeeping bullshit. You obviously don't understand how nearly every developed country has built infrastructure to exclusively allow car eccentric transportation. Busses, if they exist, suck ass. Bike lanes, if they exist, are also terrible. If you don't have a car, you can't live.
  On the other hand, almost nobody should be in personal cars. Public transportation fucking sucks and needs to be massively improved so that people like whom you responded to don't need to drive.
  edit: bring on your downvotes, I'm right and you can't handle it.
  
  If you think being cautious is incorrect then you don't know what driving incorrectly means.
- Seriusly, if you cant filter information or you are not able to react to your surroundings please dont drive. Half a second of reaction time more is a lot when you are driving a 2 ton car with 100kmh around... that si rhe reason drunk driving is not allowed or driving while high...
  
  I live in freedumb land so cars are the only reliable option. I'd love to use public transit, but doing so would require me to at least drive to a park and ride, and the bus system where I live is unreliable. I'd love to immigrate to a country that isn't car brained, but I don't have the resources.
  
  Thankfully driving with undiagnosed mental conditions are not criminalized in the states.
- If the crosswalk is designed properly, a car approaching a traffic circle should only need to look at traffic, because the crosswalk would be well in front of the traffic circle. Once you pass the crosswalk, there only reason to stop is if there's a car in the way.
  That's the great thing about traffic circles, they reduce the sensory input so drivers only need to worry about one thing at a time. At a regular intersection, you need to worry about pedestrians and potentially cars coming from two directions.
  The safest thing to do at a traffic circle is enter and exit as efficiently as possible. If you stop unnecessarily, it'll take longer to get your car moving (increasing accident risk in the circle) and potentially cause backups in other intersections behind you.
  
  Most of the roundabouts near me have the crosswalks right up by the circle, so you'd have to either stop on top of the crosswalk, or stop with it in front of you. If you stopped with the crosswalk behind you, you'd be in the circle.
  And I do look at the circle ahead of time and will go if it is clear, but if it isn't then I do stop, and it happens to take me longer to make a decision as to when I am good to go than most other people.
  If I didn't live in freedumb land, I wouldn't drive, but driving is the only reliable option here.
- If you can't drive don't get behind the wheel
  
  I'd gladly opt out of driving if it were reasonable to do so. Give us transit and proper bicycle infrastructure so I that don't risk getting pancaked but some fuckwit driver with their nose in their phone.
  Note that I've been driving for over a quarter century without collision or moving violation, so not so much a skill issue per se.
- Yea, all the circles around me car c would be cutting off the pink car by the time they actually got moving into the circle if they were stopped. The circles are not that big.
  
  That's why you shouldn't come to a stop. Coast slowly from further away so you can accelerate easier into the circle
  
  They shouldn't be stopped.

Car D is going to have to wait for car A no matter what
Assuming no cars come after yellow car, it doesn't matter if car C goes or not.
Honestly it's nicer because car D doesn’t have to move up a car length to yield.
Yes they could get screwed very hard though
- Well couple of things.
  You don't know how long C has been incorrectly yielding. There may well have been enough time for them both to move onward.
  Also there's nothing to say that A isn't a yet undiscovered C.
  I'm from the UK so roundabouts are second nature. I've been an accidental C before. Where I had to wait for a lot of cars that had priority over me. When it finally was open for me I was zoned out. Luckily the car behind me was very polite and just used a short beep of the horn to bring me back to reality.
- D could take the first exit while signalling

Yield to traffic in circle, not yield to anything in your perspective quadrant of the circle.. Leave grandpa be, he's running on nothing but cortisol and spite for death. And try to circulate the cabin air, quit huffing the exhaust from tailgating. The don't test emissions in roundabout country...

The pink car is yielding incorrectly, and may cause an accident.
My city has two circles, both one lane with 3 entry/exits. Actually the one not near me might have more, but I know its one lane. Amazing how many people have trouble with them.
- The pink car isn’t yielding at all, it’s in motion

229 comments