Concomitant with Southern California’s thriving car culture are heavily congested roads and high car accident rates. Researchers at Texas A&M found that Los Angeles and Orange counties have some of the worst traffic in the country. Such conditions have attracted widespread attention from the media, state transportation agencies, and safety advocates, many of whom are exploring a form of traffic control long used in European countries: the roundabout.
While traffic circles have a tendency to vex many Americans, the modern counterpart to them—roundabouts—are smaller, safer, and less chaotic. Due to their size, roundabouts require drivers to negotiate smaller curves, thereby forcing them to slow down. At reduced speeds, collisions are not only less likely but also not as violent, resulting in fewer and less severe injuries. Moreover, because traffic is slower and vehicles enter or exit only by making right turns, the risk of a serious accident is lower than for signalized intersections, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.
Studies of roundabouts in Kansas, Maryland, California, and other states have found that post-construction fatal or incapacitating crashes declined by 90 percent and ones resulting in personal injury decreased by 76 percent, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Since they reduce the number of lanes of traffic pedestrians must cross, they have also been found to be safer for them than signalized intersections.
Roundabouts have the potential to alleviate traffic congestion, as vehicles are not forced to stop and wait at intersections. Studies conducted after the replacement of stop signs with roundabouts in Kansas, Maryland, and Nevada found that vehicle delays decreased by as much as 23 percent. An IIHS study of 10 signalized intersections found that had there been roundabouts in these locations instead, motorists would have waited in traffic for 325,000 fewer hours a year, explains a lawyer.
Considering that commuters in Los Angeles and Orange counties spent 63 more hours in traffic than many other areas in the nation in 2009, at an average annual cost $1,464 to each commuter, traffic agencies should research the extent to which roundabouts could impact congestion and the incidence of car accidents on California roads.
