In Praise of Roundabouts

It’s a little like the weather,

an evergreen icebreaker.

Turn your ear to the Midwest, and you’ll hear it on the wind:

“They keep putting in these roundabouts.”

A Real Beauty - Photo by Ádám Berkecz on Unsplash

My little Ohio hometown has grown a bit over the years. These gray hairs above the ears will defend my right to reminisce how it used to be. There was never a Starbucks, or a 24-hour gas station, or even anything open past eight. I remember empty farmland edging in my parents’ house and yard; now, in every direction, it’s other houses with other yards.

Hartville is no booming metro. Honestly, I’ve never heard any great complaint that “this place has changed.” But if ever you’re in Hartville needing for a conversation topic—to bond with your fellow man over a shared complaint—just bring up the roundabouts.

It’s an instant connection, with an unsubtle subtext of grievance. “Yeah, and they’re putting in another down by ____.”

Having Amish ancestry, I consider myself old guard in Hartville. However, I may be stripped of my honors for what the title of this essay has already betrayed:

I really like the roundabouts.

Are our memories that short? Does no one remember how it was? You used to have to schedule errands around busy hours at the flea market. There was no getting through town on a Saturday. One of my core memories is the family minivan narrowly escaping a wreck in an intersection we’d just waited an hour to get to. The other driver—like everyone—had grown impatient with the wait and in his fury almost started a pileup.

Today? In that same spot sits a traffic circle.

I will grant: There are a ton of them. Our relatively small town got rounded all about with as much warning as a yellow light. But who cares? You can’t fight progress.

Enter, roundabouts.

Why support the circles? Years ago, I listened to an episode of “Stuff You Should Know” that helped shape my view. I haven’t relistened lately, but here are the takeaways as I recall:

1.     Fewer fatal accidents take place in roundabouts than in traditional intersections.

It’s the statistical truth. This is a major advantage.

Why fewer fatalities, though?

2.     There’s no scenario for a head-on collision—the deadliest kind—in a roundabout.

With the configuration of angles, entrances, and exits, the collisions possible in a traffic circle are of the less harmful varieties and they happen at lower speeds.

Compare this to a typical streetlight intersection, where the most dangerous collisions are some of the most likely. As someone who’s been struck head-on waiting at a light, I get the benefit of this. Sure, getting the corner of your bumper tapped would be annoying, but it’s better than watching the Spectrum™️ repair truck bounding toward you at full speed.

Okay, these all seem like benefits. What’s the big issue?

It has to do with the last major point:

3.     Roundabouts create heightened stress in drivers approaching the intersection.

This is the one that people hate. And they’ll tell you; It’s the third or fourth line in the small-talk script. “I’m always so nervous pulling into them. No one knows how to drive.”

It’s true, approaching a roundabout can provoke an uneasy feeling. You grip “ten and two” as you slow down in the approach. You enter cautiously, eyeing other drivers and your surroundings. If you’re worried enough, you might even set your phone down as you pull through.

You know, all the things you would do if you were operating a two-ton piece of machinery.

As it turns out, the unsettling experience of a roundabout is one of its features, not a bug. You’re supposed to be a little uncomfortable. You’re supposed to snap out of the driving daze and remember what it is you’re actually doing. And hopefully, that alertness will last for another 10 minutes or so until you decide to drive with your knees and finish that burrito bowl.

Besides, if you didn’t know, people are bad drivers everywhere. Always. That didn’t start in the roundabout. What changed is that you lost the binary red-light green-light that tricks you into feeling secure. It lets you imagine you’re part of a perfectly controlled system and everything is going according to plan.

But painted lines won’t actually protect you, and Spectrum™️ repair is on the way.

Pickle - Photo by Timothy Nisly

The truth is, I want painted lines and traffic lights too. Tell me when to go. Green. Tell me when to stop. Red. I’ll do my personal best to skirt the system, but I tell myself that everyone else is playing along.

The illusion of certainty sedates something in us: The awareness of danger, the worry, that nagging reminder that we exist. But we want the illusion. We want to forget.

We tend to get discomfort all wrong. At best, we stuff stress—like just another feeling I don’t want to feel. At worst, we equate it to external oppression. It’s a painful irony, as soberly facing reality is often the truest path to the peace we desire.

I’ll put it another way: Getting stressed out driving isn’t bad for you. Getting hit is.

I’ve enjoyed reading several books by Mark Batterson in which he often repeats a quote by Charles Spurgeon: “I have learned to kiss the wave that throws me against the Rock of Ages.” Waves of the ocean are a natural wonder with which I’m intimately acquainted here in Florida. But for my readers back home, roundabouts may be a more apt analogy.

Pray to resist you may, but your turn in a traffic circle will come. When it does, the prudent, most reasonable response is that of gratitude.

We’d all love an intersection that doesn’t make us work—that lets us eat pizza and film TikToks mindlessly. What the enlightened way of the roundabout teaches is to instead embrace the jolt in heart-rate. To notice the deep breath in. To appreciate the refocusing of your attention.

Hands on ten and two.