The perfect Traffic Light Graphic example...

Credits:

Happy to see XKCD readers here.

That looks light the traffic control in Jacksonville, Fl. I hope I never have to go back there again.

I personally hope I never see traffic lights of any description, ever! But I realise we must have them, but do we have to have them on roundabouts, all day, and all night, when they are only needed at peak traffic volume times?

And they are often sequenced wrongly... surely the idea is that when you get green to go, the lights should be changing to green in front of you as you go round the roundabout, allowing the traffic that the green light put onto the roundabout to progress off it. But no, sadly I know of cases where you are let onto the roundabout, only to be stopped on it by the next set of lights letting more traffic onto the roundabout !! It's just a good way of making a car-park !!

And how about this for stupidity... traveling south on the M6 motorway from Manchester to Birmingham at about midnight I got held up for an hour in a crawling 7 mile tailback !!

The reason? They had closed a section of the motorway for roadworks, so all the traffic was diverted off at junction 15, and guess what.. junction 15 has a roundabout with traffic lights on it, and they were working at midnight, and everyone was obeying them, and i doubt there was any significant traffic coming from any other direction.

When it was my turn at the lights, I did what I would do at any non-controlled roundabout, and used my common sense - "Give Way" (I think you call it Yield over the pond) - and went through on red. I considered making a complaint about it, but what good would it have done.

Rant over.

PS. Like the graphic Russ ....

daba, check out the 3 times a week graphic at www.xkcd.com. The author is in engineering and does the most interesting items. I check it out often.

daba said:

I personally hope I never see traffic lights of any description, ever! But I realise we must have them, but do we have to have them on roundabouts....

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I thought the whole point of a roundabout was to eliminate traffic lights!

I personally hope I never see traffic lights of any description, ever! But I realise we must have them, but do we have to have them on roundabouts, all day, and all night, when they are only needed at peak traffic volume times?

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Roundabout, what is that?

There are very few roundabouts here in the US. I was amazed to see those in London and people getting through intersections just dandy without stop signs or stop lights.

Here our great city, county, and state government traffic controllers started with the assumption that no one with a mere drivers license could possibly have enough smarts to navigate without complete Big Brother control 24 hours a day. Then they made it worse. I hope that the next generation of controls will at least be sensible.

I lived in Olympia WA for a while and they added a few roundabouts there. People were so confused by them they made their public channel dedicated to "how to negotiate a roundabout". /facepalm

They recently eliminated a few 3 way stops in the town I live in now with a couple of roundabouts. I love it.

A double for me, most people get it.. but some just sit there waiting on the light to turn green

bernie_carlton said:

daba, check out the 3 times a week graphic at www.xkcd.com. The author is in engineering and does the most interesting items. I check it out often.

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And for those not familiar with xkcd, hover the mouse over each drawing for a thought from Randall (the author).

Just out of curiousity, what does the purple light mean?

We have been getting roundabouts here for the last 8 or so years. Took a while to figure them out but most have the hang of it now.

The interesting part will be when they install (read: replace lights) them on one of our major arteries through the city, 11 roundabouts in a 6km strech of 4 lane road with a high school on one of them. Should be a real treat to navigate.

Tom Jenkins said:

I thought the whole point of a roundabout was to eliminate traffic lights!

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Originally, yes, Tom. But they discovered that the busiest routes at peak times got the lion's share, to the detriment of the less busy roads. So they put lights on them to "improve traffic flow". In some cases it must have worked, provided they got the timing and sequencing right, but in many cases they haven't done enough surveys to get it right.

And I live in an area that seems to have gone overboard with roundabouts - the first pic shows an area near me, less than a mile square, with 10 roundabouts in it !! Madness if you ask me.

Although not as bad as some parts of Spain - the second pic is in an area in Gran Canaria called Maspalomas : In other places they have roundabouts as the entry and exit routes to bigger roundabouts !!

Lancie1 said:

Roundabout, what is that?

There are very few roundabouts here in the US. I was amazed to see those in London and people getting through intersections just dandy without stop signs or stop lights.

Here our great city, county, and state government traffic controllers started with the assumption that no one with a mere drivers license could possibly have enough smarts to navigate without complete Big Brother control 24 hours a day. Then they made it worse. I hope that the next generation of controls will at least be sensible.

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I wouldn't bet anything on that assumption ....

Tom Jenkins said:

I thought the whole point of a roundabout was to eliminate traffic lights!

Click to expand...

yep
Now we have red trafic lights at Roundabouts during peak hour

I wouldn't bet anything on that assumption ....

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It is not an assumption, merely a hope for a change. You have heard of the "hope and change" implemented by our soon-to-be-ex-President?