Quote:
Originally Posted by Rapscallion St Croix
While using left lane to got straight through is perfectly legal, I view it as an unnecessary gamble. I always expect every other person in a roundabout is going to pull a dumbass move.
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How is that any different from using the right lane to go straight through. If you have someone in the left lane that decides to take the first exit you're in the same predicament.
When driving in a roundabout you simply have to be aware of everyone and everything surrounding you. I always drive expecting the other guy to do something stupid.
As far as the roundabouts claiming another one, I'd love to see the statistics on how many accidents there are in our roundabouts each year. I also like to see how many accidents there are in The Villages, in general, each year and what percentage of them occur in roundabouts.
Sometimes the perception is different from the reality. I had someone tell me that they are leaving The Villages and moving to Ocala because of the golf cart traffic. He quoted a statistic that said there have been 20 golf cart related deaths in the past nine years. I say that given the fact that we have 130,000 residents, 70,000 golf carts, and traffic from outside of TV coming through every day, that we should be congratulated for our fine safety record. Two deaths per year with all of that traffic, especially considering that we have so many elderly people seems pretty low to me.
Now, of course, every traffic-related death is a tragedy, but to think that with all of these carts on the road along all of the other traffic, that we're going to have zero accidents and zero deaths, is more than a bit unrealistic.
Traffic experts all over the world say that roundabouts are safer and more efficient than four-way intersections. I don't know that the number of traffic accidents would be any different with four-way stops where people can blow stop signs.