The BBC has a profile of Carmel, Ind., calling it the "roundabout capital of America" (the mayor boasts of replacing 78 sets of traffic lights with roundabouts) and suggesting that America is well on the way to embracing "the free-floating British circular." This offends a writer for the Village Voice, who says this is like tryying to force the metric system on Americans:
If you have a cigarette in one hand and a beer in the other, how are you supposed to safely drive around a roundabout with your knees? That's pretty irresponsible of a municipality to force that upon its citizens.
I don't have strong feelings one way or the other, but I would like it if traffic officials were sensible about the things. Have you experienced the roundabout on Old Mill Road? I had occasion to go through it on Saturday, and it is not safe. The idea of a roundabout is that you're suposed to yield to a car already going through it or closer to it than you are. But the Old Mill roundabout is so thick with shurbs and bushes that you can't see someobody coming from the other side. The roundabout may be aesthetically pleasing for the folks who live there, but it's a road hazard that should be adjusted.
