Frazz by Jef Mallett for December 02, 2015

Tᴚue stoᴚy: Ameᴚricans aᴚe all scaᴚed of ᴚoundabouts.

By way of nothing:

Behind the shelter in the middle of a roundaboutThe pretty nurse is selling poppies from a trayAnd though she feels as if she’s in a playShe is anyway

I go out of my way to avoid left turns off major roads.

I have no idea why some people don’t like roundabouts….they’re great….easy peasy….

And why would they care what route she takes? Weird. I think they need new hobbies.

One thing I learned when beginning to drive, and even more so with roundabouts, Just because you have the right of way, don’t insist on it. When teaching my daughters how to drive, I told them, “Remember, you’re not the only idiot out there”. They understood that sometimes they, or even me, do stupid things on the road, just need to be careful.

This is not surprising. Although the roundabout is credited with fewer fatal accidents, it is also credited with more non-fatal, minor incidents. Driving out of your way to avoid the high probability of incidental damage, loss and increased insurance rates is not unreasonable. And it helps make the traffic statistics for roundabouts favorable enough to justify their higher construction and maintenance costs. Although you don’t have to replace and maintain lights, the frequent replacement of signs clipped off in minor accidents is considerable. Reality, as it often does, denies the logic of the projected numbers, caring nothing for statistic jugglers.

Of course, even roundabouts can be challenging:

She has rotaryphobia?

Who’s to say the something new she learned on the day the rotary opened was that she hates driving on rotaries?

I got stuck in a new roundabout in Santa Barbara one day and never took that exit again.

The Etoile roundabout in Paris is fun too. It’s other name is : how to terrorise a non-Parisian. Eight to ten lanes (depending on who is driving), 12 avenues, and 20,000 Parisians driving as if they were doing a remake of fast and furious.

(I would put a picture but I don’t know how to)

We have a roundabout in our town. Poorly planned from the beginning. It is technically on a US highway (business) and when the road project by the DOT started, they applied for federal money to help pay, feds saw the roundabout and refused to pay. Then all of the entrances to the round have “yield” signs…so. then you have people who have no freaking clue how to give a turn signal. Oh, they made it too small for tractor trailers to be able to make the round, so of course they have to replace signs and repair ruts made by the trailers trying to make it around.This year the city had the brilliant idea to place the town Christmas tree in that island. This should be interesting.

Look kids – Parliment and Big Ben!

The Roundabout can actually move people through 30% to 50% faster than a normal four way stop. In addition, it’s also safer to drivers and pedestrians.

I’ll be the roundabout The words will make you out an’ out You spend the day your way Call it morning driving Through the south In an’ out the valley

comicsssfanThe irony is that at least in Texas, coaches don’t have to be teachers. A rich school system could have legally hired Tom Landry when he left the Cowboys (back when they won games), but didn’t. They hire someone with a major in PE and a minor in secondary education, and turn them loose. There is no advantage for the school and only one advantage for the coach: if he has enough winning seasons, he can become a principal and then a superintendent, and tell real teachers how to teach.

Wanted to take a minute to thank you for a number of things,

For posting your coding.

For saving coding in the first Agnes strip to run on GC, so it is easy to get to

For your recipes.

Thanks for all of the above.

When I would get into one of these:I would treat it as a big roulette wheel. Purely a game of chance. I would brave the entrance, sing “Nearer My God To Thee” until I could exit somewhere – anywhere – and whichever road I was on then, that’s the way I would go.

To be human is to complicate things!

Roundabouts in Britain, where everyone has learned to drive with lots of them – no problem.

Roundabouts in the US where so many of the locals seemed clueless – quite worrying! But still better than a four-way stop – now that really is a bad idea. Either too many people who stop at once and won’t go, or too many who decide they’re not going to be the one to wait. (and the ones near where I lived in PA often seemed to smell of skunk so I guess the wildlife didn’t cope well with them either!)

J Ba’s photo isn’t exactly a roundabout, is it? It looks to be five roundabouts arranged in a circle, like the famous Magic Roundabout (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Roundabout_%28Swindon%29 – which I’ve used and it’s absolutely fine. ‘the roundabout provides a better throughput of traffic than other designs and has an excellent safety record, since traffic moves too slowly to do serious damage in the event of a collision’.

Call it morning driving through the sound andIn and out the valley.

The reciprocal R was the cool part of the strip and everyone else talked traffic circles! Glad you caught that also.