Originally Posted by
SpeedofLite
OK, I'll play.
I snapped these photos (360 degrees) of a roundabout (aka traffic circle, rotary) in the middle of nowhere while riding cross country in 2014.
I was riding from Blythe. CA to Wickenburg, AZ that day, and I think these photos were taken on Arizona State Rd 60 East (SR60E).
Not certain if massive rapid development of the area was expected and civic planners were getting a jump on things, or if it was some payback in Congress for a vote, or whatever.
It reminded me of the Blazing Saddles scene in which the good guys placed a toll booth in the middle of the desert to delay the arrival of a gang of bad guys.
Maybe now that it's 5 years later, the roundabout there makes more sense than it did then.
Wow. Big Sky country! Current Streetview shows a fair bit of traffic on the crossing road (and a pickup truck on the rotary rolling coal.) But sometimes roundabouts are installed out in the middle of nowhere just to prevent cross traffic from running the stop sign at full speed "if there's nothing coming." Any collisions from miscalculation and failure to yield are then slower sideswipes instead of high-speed T-bones. Offsetting the two "halves" of the intersection so both directions on the minor road see a T is another approach. There was a horrific crash in Saskatchewan recently (similar flat, lonely, treeless country inviting pedal to the metal) where a tractor-trailer blew a stop at speed and was hit by a bus carrying a minor hockey team. Many deaths and life-altering injuries; the truck driver pleaded guilty and is now in prison. There had been another bad crash at the same intersection a few years previously; makeshift memorial crosses were visible in police and news photos which also showed the small stand of windbreak trees that perhaps hid the bus and the truck from each other. A roundabout would have forced the truck to slow down even if he wasn't planning to yield. But they are unpopular because they impose an obligation to slow down and yield from all directions.