DENJCA29

Wow, I'm surprised that more of you don't know the difference between modern roundabouts and old school traffic circles. As oroen mentioned before, in America there is a distinct naming difference and even in the rest of the world, call it whatever you want, there is a difference between the two. The east coast has many older traffic circles that were dangerous and needed traffic lights to make them safe, but modern roundabouts don't need traffic lights, traffic lights are dangerous. Here is an example of a modern roundabout: The one that was pictured about 3 times above, where most recently dark jedi commented about it being hard to get out of Dunkin' Donuts, is NOT a modern roundabout. Those are dangerous and have low traffic volumes in camparison to modern roundabouts. Milton Kenyes in England is known for having many modern roundabouts and although (as someone mentioned before) you never get above 30mph, you get through that city a heck of a lot faster than you do in any place in Orange County, California. Here, we have a big time hurry up and wait system. Roads through towns are 50mph and if you don't race like crazy to make the light, you need to jam on your breaks and wait for about 1-2 minutes before you can move again. Your average speed driving around here is definitely less than 30, probably less than 20. And they are much prettier, here's an example of a before and after pic, the modern roundabout intersection in this case actually allows MORE traffic volume and it's much safer. Ashville, NC