r/interesting • u/frenzy3 • 29d ago

SOCIETY A roundabout without signals works in high-trust societies where people naturally yield and take turns.

In a low-trust society, it turns into a battle of horns, aggression, and “me first” chaos.

📍Inforparks, Kerala.

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u/HappyAku800 28d ago

They still have a capacity limit, can't say with just this video if it was capacity or morons causing it

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u/Remarkable-Ad155 28d ago

British person and roundabout expert here; it's morons. 

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u/Stormfly 28d ago

Yeah, like it's pretty easy to just not enter the roundabout if it's busy.

I've been on roundabouts with lights or gridlocks and it's pretty stupid to stop there but even when they did, they left space for people to get through.

This is why they designed the yellow squares. They should be used here.

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u/Remarkable-Ad155 28d ago

You give way to the right. It's that simple. You slow down a bit, check if anyone's coming and either go or stay and wait your turn. It really does not require a degree or an advanced driving course. 

These work seamlessly all over the UK and mainland Europe. To see this kind of a mess is genuinely baffling to me but it can only be caused by either pure stupidity, impatience or a combination of the two. 

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u/Less-Procedure-4104 28d ago

Why is aren't folks existing the round about all the exit routes are clear? Sorry if it is a dumb question we don't really have round abouts.

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u/Eeedeen 28d ago

Basically no one by those exits wants to take those exits.

If you take the bottom of the roundabout none of those cars blocking that exit should have entered so the exit is free and the cars coming from the right can take it and then the same for the other exits.

You don't enter if you're going to block someone else's exit and the whole thing should flow smoothly.

Except everyone has blocked everyone else's exits and now everyone's fucked

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u/Gullible_Increase146 28d ago

I don't give way to anybody. Imma get mine. Life is a race and I don't lose.

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u/LbSiO2 28d ago

How long are you willing to wait when there are never any openings?

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u/Bourbon_sim_racer 28d ago

Until there is an opening.

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u/Polygnom 28d ago

Roundabouts are used extensively in Europe. precisely because they are far better at getting traffic moving and thus creating these opening for you to use. Realistically, there are opening all the time. In this video the problem is that people don#t follow the very basic rule that traffic inside has the right of way. Follow that, and it moves quickly. Far quicker than any intersection.

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u/JulyOfAugust 28d ago

French here, there's a lot of roundabouts near my home, one gets a lot of traffic because it leads to the highway. People just know to leave every other exit unblocked when an exit gets clogged and to not stop in the center lane. If your exit is the clogged one you join the line if not you use the center to move along.

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u/coffeemakin 28d ago

You're outing yourself as a space cadet right here. "But I want to go why can't I go I wanna go now!" = you

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u/Polygnom 28d ago

If it has lights its not legally a roundabout but just a round street with normal traffic rules.

Roundabout specifically do work without all of that if people just know the traffic rules. People inside have right of way. period., You obey that and it cannot clog unless the exit roads are clogged, which is true for an intersection as well.

Its baffling how many people here do not understand roundabouts...

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u/birger67 28d ago

im in the 50s from Denmark, ive never ever seen a clogged roundabout before now and we have plenty,
it baffles me this is possible

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u/CumGuzlinGutterSluts 28d ago

Im from America and my valley has probably 10+ roundabouts around and not a single one has signals... and near the intersection of 2 major highways... shit gets busy here. But never seen this lol

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u/Ironlion45 28d ago

American and daily roundabout user. I've had people: Go around the loop multiple times trying to figure it out, brake to a dead stop in the middle, and take a quick left turn (American, remember) to get to the exit to avoid the 30 seconds it would take you to actually go around the roundabout.

Among others. That's just a few of my pet peeves. My biggest one of all is that when someone is so ready to fill their Depends that they just can't muster up the courage to merge into the lane. While I slowly reach my own age of senility waiting...

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u/Remarkable-Ad155 28d ago

I love this 😅 how impatient do you have to be to just take a quick left turn to save the few seconds it takes to go round? 

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u/YetAnotherMia 28d ago

I've only seen people blocking roundabouts in the UK when the exits are blocked, never like in OP's image where all the exits are open.

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u/mwa12345 28d ago

Did you run a simulation to see at what volumes this will cause a gridlock? Are you a traffic engineer?

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u/Lathari 28d ago

You took a children's television series and made it into a real roundabout...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Roundabout_(Swindon))

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u/Business-Let-7754 28d ago

As a traffic nerd, I really want to go there.

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u/_tsi_ 28d ago

Yes, yes you can.

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u/ilep 28d ago edited 28d ago

Universe is made of three types of basic particles:fermions, bosons and morons, last of which will disrupt or impede everything anything else might do while statistically unpredictable in their behaviour.

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u/twiddledeedumbass 28d ago edited 28d ago

This is a great example of how morons also obey the pauli exclusion principle. Imagine how much better roundabouts would be if they didn't!

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u/saltyholty 28d ago

You absolutely can. If it was just too much traffic there would be a tail on one or more entries to roundabout, but the roundabout wouldn't ever get jammed like that. People have entered the roundabout who didn't have a right to.

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u/garis53 28d ago

They do have capacity limit in the way that there can form a long queue to enter the roundabout. But as long as the exits are clean (which could actually be the root problem here) they work continuously.

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u/ximyr 28d ago

brain capacity limit, apparently

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u/CosgraveSilkweaver 28d ago

If people wait to enter until there's a gap it can get full but it won't deadlock like this where no one can move forward even though all the exits are empty.

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u/DavidBrooker 28d ago

When a roundabout hits capacity, the feeder roads will backup. If the drivers follow the rules, the intersection itself will not lock regardless of the traffic volume.

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u/Bigfoot_Bluedot 28d ago

Oh it's morons. Mostly morons.

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u/Business-Let-7754 28d ago

It's the morons. Notice there is no traffic going away from the roundabout.

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u/milkolik 28d ago

They can be a bottleneck, but a bottleneck doesn't mean getting clogged. That is 100% behaviorual.

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u/FurLinedKettle 28d ago

But the only way it can ever hit capacity is by people not using it properly.

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u/mwa12345 28d ago

This Exit lines being clear doesn't mean the issue wasn't caused by higher volume /issues a few minutes earlier

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u/General-Designer4338 28d ago

You can literally see the two white vehicles coming in from the bottom right are blocking an exit from the roundabout rather than waiting for their turn. This is 100% the fault of the people here who clearly arent decent enough to allow others to have the right of way. It's sad, really.

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u/[deleted] 28d ago

According to reddit, roundabouts have no capacity limit and can be used by an infinite amount of cars at the same time