* Roundabouts 101
Posted on June 8th, 2008 by Dave Johnson. Filed under AJAX, climatechange, grindsmygears.
This morning I remembered why I never use the Vancouver Ontario Street cycle route - it is littered with death traps. No not the type that you may have seen in the recent Jones movie, I am talking about the invasive species introduced from the UK called the North American roundabout. It can generally by discerned by the motorists driving through it at break neck speeds; one may also identify it by the pieces of broken bicycles and / or cyclists strewn about in various states of disrepair.
If you use the Ontario Street bike route you must have a death wish. I think that Main Street - though you do have to be wary of door prizes in certain areas - is actually far safer for cyclists. I for one feel that rather than being segregated to the back of the bus, in the name of safety cyclists should be using the proper road ways, pissing of the car driving, climate changing commuters.
At any rate, one can see in the lovely animated gif, care of the Wikipedia article, that vehicles entering the roundabout yield to those already in the roundabout - be them cars, bikes or hover boards. What that means here in North America is that when entering the roundabout you give the right of way to those on the left unlike a regular stop sign.
Maybe we just need more magic roundabouts?
One Response to “Roundabouts 101”
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June 9th, 2008 at 12:12 am
I agree. Roundabouts on any hill is absolutely insane. This annoying feature can find itself on the Mosaic bikeroute as well, albeit not as bad as on Ontario. The idea behind them is to calm traffic in residential areas, while in reality they just prove to be obstacles to cyclists trying to go down a hill.
But Ontario is a death trap regardless, especially with all the traffic and construction going on there.