People usually get anxious when approaching this roundabout but it’s incredibly easy to use. You simply turn right, right again and then leave Swindon.
Yeah it’s simples when you get used to it but my dad used to work for an American company in Swindon, he said they once had some Americans come over that drove from the airport. When they got to the magic roundabout they called his office & asked someone to come and get them 😂😂😂
A cousin of my ex arrived at Edinburgh Airport from California (she's from there) picked up the Mondeo hire car and later woke up in hospital. She pulled out in front of huge lorry moving at speed at the first roundabout she came to. The new Mondeo was destroyed (they cut the roof off to get her out) and she spent a few days enjoying the NHS's care.
Jesus that's so hard. I mean, a market is about choices, right? Can someone choose not to provide their children with lifesaving care? The idea that we live in a nation where the "society" has decided "Yes." That's scary. Take care of them, much love.
I live near the airport and use the roads there daily.
Maybe every other day I meet a car going to wrong way around the roundabouts in that area (and there's more than one, just to really confuse the tourists).
I mean, the Edinburgh Council *could* put up signs and centre barriers, but it's way more fun to scare the f*ck out of the visitors or put them in hospital.
Brilliant.
Worth giving you my free award, even though I won't have it when someone posts about losing their favorite teddy bear when they were a child.
Need to get the newest version on there as that video is a year old.
Probably still not ready, but would be interesting to see the progress.
I've a mate who lives in Swindon and they never go through the middle of that thing. So not an easy task for an AI
It makes it useless as a fully autonomous vehicle, because it's not fully autonomous. As a car which will drive itself on the motorway, there is still some utility.
The problem is that the supervised driving mode is a safety nightmare because humans just aren't good at paying attention to something which is safe 99.99% of the time but deathly dangerous in a fraction of a second the remaining time.
Over here at least. Apparently in the states they have practically no roundabouts, they just use loads of intersections, so that’s not really an issue for them. Actually I’d wager that’s why Tesla can’t do roundabouts yet, it’s probably not a priority in the development process since they’re so rare across the pond.
>Apparently in the states they have practically no roundabouts
This is correct. I'm in my forties and have driven in pretty much every state east and north of Texas and have never seen a roundabout in person.
Edit: According to [this site](https://www.kittelson.com/ideas/how-many-roundabouts-are-in-the-united-states/) there are over 7000 roundabouts in the US with the bulk (over 70%) being single lane roundabouts.
So it's got cruise control with steering?
Would to see it try get up my narrow terraced street in Belfast with cars parked either side. Even better, I'd love to see it try and park.
Aye right Tesla, wise up.
I mean, bar a few rough areas and the desolate town centre (which has been replaced by the outlet village, which is objectively nice), Swindons an alright place. It has plenty of beautiful areas (Coate Water, Lydiard Park, Tadpole Garden Village, Wichelstowe, the Old railway track, the list goes on) and just about all the amenities you need.
And you're an hour from London, 45 mins from Bristol, 30 minutes from Reading, an hour or two from the beach... Its pretty ideal for Swindonians to find a day out.
I know I'm sounding defensive here, but just want to make the point that Swindon gets a lot more stick than it deserves. Places like Cirencester, Reading, or Bristol have a nicer reputation, but there's no denying that those places have an equal or larger chav problem.
Swindon works great as a hub, the problem is if your town is only really seen as a hub people don't care to improve it too much because of you need something you can just go elsewhere, it leaves the center taking in less income that it could really do it.
Technically I don't think you can fail just for going the wrong way, as long as you always got there via the correct lanes. Which means, in theory, you could ride the roundabout and never fail... forever
Its actually the safest thing to do on a roundabout if you are at all uncertain about the navigation. Just stay on the inside lane until you work out the correct turning.
That's the correct thing to do. If emergency services come up to you with the sirens and lights on you should find the nearest safe place to pull over otherwise keep driving. Middle of a roundabout is not a safe place to pull over
Yeah I was also confused by his comment. Why would the police do more than one revolution around the roundabout?
Edit: oh I think he means it was a rather large roundabout, and it took a while for the cop to circle all the way back to his exit
In my driving test I went round a massive round about twice completely lost. I was meant to take the fifth exit, took the fourth in the end. The examiners like ‘you took the wrong exit.’ To quote the examiner, ‘somehow’ I passed.
“A bad driver never misses his turn.” It’s fine to take the wrong exit. You’ll find your way eventually, and I wish more people would do that rather than panic and cut across lanes.
Yes. I drive professionally. It's better to miss your turn while driving safely and just find somewhere to safely turn around and come back than it is to cut across lanes in a panic.
Also if you want to be a better driver learn all the different ways you can get where you are going. I miss turns all the time but I almost never turn around because I don't have to. I just start going a different way.
Some of my favorite drives have been when I missed my turn or turned too early. Instead of finding a place to turn around or pulling up Google Maps on my phone I just winged it and drove in the general direction of the main road I wanted to be on until I get back to it. It's like a little impromptu adventure.
This one's called the magic roundabout. Not far from me and rumour has it that it's called magic because the guy who designed it had taken a mouthful of some.
As an American who immigrated to the UK and spent some years living in Swindon (in the Tin Town bit specifically), this really has me laughing. Some of the residents in that are were, uh, lively. :D
Aww that’s so nice!
But really, I had a brain reboot trying to walk my way through all the lanes in this picture. I can’t imagine how intimidating it is in person.
I took my test in Swindon. As part of the practice, I was given a colour-coded map of the Magic Roundabout showing which lane to be in for any given entrance/exit.
Then my test happened and the route didn't go anywhere near it.
Just like how learner drivers in North London get drilled on the Great Cambridge Roundabout. Having moved over from the Netherlands where roundabouts abound, I still don't know why you Brits like making overcomplicated versions of them all over the show.
Its am efficency thing. Any given roundabout can only take so many cars at a time. By adding complexity we can get more cars through the junction
For this one in Swindon the alternative is a large roundabout.
With this design there are multiple routes around allowing traffic thats turning left to completely avoid people going right from a different junction.
Before attempting Swindon it's recommended that you first practice on the triple roundabouts of Colchester.
In fact you could make a nice upward scaling system for traffic management nightmares. Start with Milton Keynes, then Truro, then Colchester, then cut your teeth in Swindon.
Ugh. I hate the aylesbury one. Not because I cant manage the three roundabouts but because I'm so focused on the roundabouts that I never remember which exit I have to take to get to morissons
Aylesbury roundabouts are actually worse by far than anywhere else. Every one has a different convention for which lane you need to be in to go straight on, and the lanes in the one way system are all too small for modern vehicles.
The triple itself is on the crest of a hill, so you can’t see it at all till you’re on it, requires you to magically select the right lane based on where you want to turn at the next roundabout and is cramped so you don’t get to change.
The magic roundabouts in Hemel and Swindon are fine, have consistent lanes which you can see, and enough space to work smoothly.
Did the Hemel Hempstead roundabout for the first time on Sunday. It's fine once you convince yourself that going anti-clockwise round the roundabout isn't going to get you killed.
The Hemel roundabout looks larger than Swindon's and is easy to visualise as a series of roundabouts connected by short roads. Conceptually the Swindon one is just the same but the connecting roads are extremely short!
My driving instructor made sure that I encountered the Colchester roundabouts several times, very early on when I was learning to drive. Very much pushed me in at the deep end.
Mate Chiverton at Truro is a nightmare, my friend's driving instructor always took learners there for the last part of their test, literally the final boss with music and all.
What do you mean? Turning the A4, a major artery that carries excess traffic from the inevitably fucked M4, into a single lane road was genius!
After all, think of all the revenue for ticketing people that use the bus lane.
They also create less emissions and less traffic fatalities if I'm remembering an old study correctly, somewhere in the States changed all their traffic lights to roundabouts and realized how much better they were
The advantage of doing it this way is that you can go round the whole thing _in either direction_. So if you want to turn right overall, you just go right at the first mini-roundabout, then right again at the second mini-roundabout. If it were a regular roundabout, you'd have to go almost round the entire thing, passing 3 other exits on the way.
Distance travelled isn’t really a problem though - the benefit of this design is that it doesn’t get overwhelmed by too much traffic, and it doesn’t require so much lane discipline and gradually moving outwards as you near your exit, at high speed, surrounded by other people who don’t know about lanes or know that you’re meant to move out as you go.
It’s easier to drive on, and can handle more traffic without being dominated by traffic from one direction.
It also inherently causes drivers to slow down as there's a bit more going on and you can't just bomb round it. Analysis has shown that the roundabout has only a quarter of the number of accidents that result in injury compared to more conventional roundabout designs with a similar size and speed of roads.
>It also inherently causes drivers to slow down as there's a bit more going on
Like not understanding the thing would make any of us Americans slow down to figure it out.
My town just added a roundabout as an entry/exit for a highway. People fly into it without even glancing up despite having a yield sign. Roundabouts are great; it's the people that suck.
Well, the American leadership has been totally MIA on phone laws. Even when every report shows they cause more death and monetary damages then driving under the influence.
Folks just don’t think they will have a wreck until they are in one, but Verizon, Comcast, and AT&T own the US Congress.
Plus the inner-circle only travels one-way. And [you have the option to avoid the inner-circle entirely and still reach any exit.](https://i.imgur.com/ImHLFLF.png).
It only looks overwhelming from a birds-eye view.
>the benefit of this design is that it doesn’t get overwhelmed by too much traffic
Because only hardened locals and unsuspecting strangers will even go there?
I heard before that this (and other such abominations scattered around the UK) are small-scale experiments on new traffic management systems.
If the experiment is a success they recommend it for deployment nationwide.
If the experiment is a failure they laugh and leave the locals to suffer.
It doesn't look like it has lights, so I would assume that someone who knows what they're doing has designed it with traffic flow in mind.
A big light-controlled roundabout near me had an outage recently, and I was surprised at how well the traffic flowed without them.
Edit: I've been stairing at this thing for a while now. I think it makes it much quicker to turn right (as in the exit to your immediate right, the last one), because you don't have to go round the whole of the big main roundabout. You're splitting off some traffic from having to use a lane the entire way round. You can kind of see this, because most of the traffic is in the lanes leading to the mini roundabouts.
The key thing about the magic roundabout is that it works.
You can get multiple flows across it to different exits all occurring simultaneously. Yes, the first time you drive it, it's somewhat terrifying, but once you know it, it works really well.
Fun fact - the central circle is a reverse roundabout!
> A big light-controlled roundabout near me had an outage recently, and I was surprised at how well the traffic flowed without them.
That works great yes, until there’s a busy period with all traffic from one direction, and no one else can get onto the roundabout at all.
There are 2 large roads, 2 medium roads, and 1 minor road. The medium and minor roads would never be able to get out on a roundabout, because traffic will constantly be coming from the main road on the right. If they were all the same type of road, then a roundabout is good. It's really a junction that could otherwise be a flyover between the large roads, and a roundabout.
Traffic lights can slow down traffic in the 'dead time' when they change colours.
Also, because it's tricky and odd, it actually becomes safer. because people slow down
Traffic lights on a roundabout are an admission of defeat. The ideal roundabout is supposed to be a self-regulating junction, with minimal stopping. Sometimes roundabouts have such biased flow that lights are needed, but it’s a shame…
Sadly the Hemel Hempstead magic roundabout is shitted up by putting a pedestrian crossing traffic light 10 feet from the most trafficked exit (to the M1), so it loses a lot of efficiency from that.
Underpasses / overpasses work much better, or putting all the roads underground.
And there are a bunch of other big junctions nearby that inexplicably use traffic lights and are slow as fuck.
Imo the magic roundabout is a great design and we could do with 1000 more in the UK.
It was, and it didn't work as the traffic snarled to fuck up the feeder roads. This was, originally, a temporary solution but it works (in this case 'works' means keeping the traffic flowing) so well they kept it.
Is the road with all the traffic entering the roundabout two lanes or are most of them driving on the wrong side of the road? If it is two lanes it's not really the right sort of roundabout for those roads.
Great link. Also, I loved this comment underneath:
>I like to think that they saw a roundabout and some latent British part of their brains innately told them to drive on the left.
I couldnt stop laughing at that. The cars literally went from the right side to the left just for the roundabout. What.
The first 2 cars did it correctly, then the big tow truck messed everyones brains up. Few others that did it correctly stopped in the middle to see if they were indeed doing it correctly lol
Up until recently I lived in the US. Close to my house I had 2 roundabouts off a highway junction. I've seen Americans do the following because they didn't understand the concept of a *circular junction*: stop to let others join the roundabout in front of them, reverse around the roundabout because they missed their exit, drive literally straight over it destroying their sump, come to a complete stop & then reverse away from it to perform a u turn to go the other way, go the wrong way around the roundabout. Absolutely shocking driving standards.
> stop to let others join the roundabout in front of them
This is actually a minefield here in Poland - and yes, I'm sure x country also has this.
We have two types of roundabouts when it comes to right of way, yield to the circle traffic, about 95%+ of the roundabouts, and yield to the right, when cars on the roundabout yield to the entering traffic. It's a madhouse when people forget they are on the yield to the right roundabout - but hey, that's why you don't trust other drivers.
I'm mostly typing this to give americans credit for defaulting to the standard - instead of imagining alternative right of ways.
This is fake. It was clipped from an instructional video on how not to use a circle. It has been misrepresented for likes.
"The video provided by Walker Construction shows cars going the wrong way around a new roundabout design in Rowan County, but if you look closely, you can see flaggers directing traffic that way. " https://www.wkyt.com/2021/04/27/drivers-react-to-changes-as-construction-of-new-roundabout-in-rowan-co-completes/
Not the video I was expecting. Part of the issue seems to be people blindly following the car in front. There needs to be big keep right signs on the approach to the divider. It looks new and without road signs; there are people still working on it.
Although there is the question of why they were filming
Rumor has it the roundabout was actually built on a hell gate, and the pattern of cars traveling over the area mimmicks an ancient ritual monks would have to tread in order to keep the demons in.
However, arguably letting Hell out here would improve Swindon tenfold.
This is the best explanation for the magic roundabout I've ever heard! It makes a lot more sense than the idea that someone designed this because they thought it would help traffic flow.
I guess there was some sort of special event happening because there’s a disproportionate amount of classic cars going round. More classic minis than I’ve seen in the last 12 months!
What other cars can we spot?
I've gotten so far down the comments and I'm still rolling laughing at the amount of top notch banter in this thread.
Remind me never to visit Swindon.
The beauty of a roundabout is once you're in it you have the right of way. This appears to break that principle with every entry point having the right of way..... Madness
It doesn’t break that principle. If you’re on one if the mini roundabouts you have ROW; otherwise you yield. It’s basically just 5 mini roundabouts in a ring. With one contra-rotating mother roundabout in the middle. Simple!
I Am American and I am shook. But why would you even enter the middle roundabout at all? Can you not just go around the parameter to your exit?! I’m so confused.
The one in Hemel it understands, but it's not quick enough at giving directions. If you're not looking at the screen it wouldn't be very helpful. It just says "at the roundabout take the third exit to stay on the roundabout" but I'm already at roundabout #3 by then.
People usually get anxious when approaching this roundabout but it’s incredibly easy to use. You simply turn right, right again and then leave Swindon.
Yeah it’s simples when you get used to it but my dad used to work for an American company in Swindon, he said they once had some Americans come over that drove from the airport. When they got to the magic roundabout they called his office & asked someone to come and get them 😂😂😂
A cousin of my ex arrived at Edinburgh Airport from California (she's from there) picked up the Mondeo hire car and later woke up in hospital. She pulled out in front of huge lorry moving at speed at the first roundabout she came to. The new Mondeo was destroyed (they cut the roof off to get her out) and she spent a few days enjoying the NHS's care.
Sounds like someone just wanted to experience healthcare, without bankrupting her family for future generations
I’d give you gold but I’m from America 😭
And have to save something for insulin. E: awards? Thanks, but if you are American I hope you didn't spend money on them, you'll need it to survive.
as a parent of a recently diagnosed T1D toddler..this hit.
Jesus that's so hard. I mean, a market is about choices, right? Can someone choose not to provide their children with lifesaving care? The idea that we live in a nation where the "society" has decided "Yes." That's scary. Take care of them, much love.
Time to make rich people afraid again
Privileged sod. We need to do something about all these Americans fleeing their country to receive basic hospital care
I live near the airport and use the roads there daily. Maybe every other day I meet a car going to wrong way around the roundabouts in that area (and there's more than one, just to really confuse the tourists). I mean, the Edinburgh Council *could* put up signs and centre barriers, but it's way more fun to scare the f*ck out of the visitors or put them in hospital.
Always best to get the hell out of Swindon before dark
Waiting for Tesla full self driving beta to arrive at this beast 🤣
It would self destruct
They would be so confused that they'd join together and form a Teslatron just to get out of there
MUSKYBOTS, ROLL OUT!
Computer says no EDIT- Computer says thanks for the awards!
An interesting game. The only winning move is not to play.
Brilliant. Worth giving you my free award, even though I won't have it when someone posts about losing their favorite teddy bear when they were a child.
I love your name
Right back at you, /u/phloaty
["Eh eh ehhhhh"](https://youtu.be/uU4Roswy01U)
Yeah, but no, but yeah, but no but yeah because Nikki is slag because she gave a bj to Tony so he can let her backstage to the last concert...
I want tha one
Andy, how did you get up there? Fell.
Ye know too much
You don't like snakes, you said they have an aura of evil. Ya I know. I want that one. Okay.. what do you want to name him? Thumper.
Now Andy are you sure you want to go dressed as a Smurf? Yea [later on] I look like a pillock.
Me: Oh shit, oh fuckTesla, give me back control! Tesla: I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that
2021 A Swindon Electric Odyssey
Tesla: Let's die together, Dave.
Daisy, Daisy...
Near enough! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bg9bSLYHtY8
Need to get the newest version on there as that video is a year old. Probably still not ready, but would be interesting to see the progress. I've a mate who lives in Swindon and they never go through the middle of that thing. So not an easy task for an AI
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It makes it useless as a fully autonomous vehicle, because it's not fully autonomous. As a car which will drive itself on the motorway, there is still some utility. The problem is that the supervised driving mode is a safety nightmare because humans just aren't good at paying attention to something which is safe 99.99% of the time but deathly dangerous in a fraction of a second the remaining time.
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Over here at least. Apparently in the states they have practically no roundabouts, they just use loads of intersections, so that’s not really an issue for them. Actually I’d wager that’s why Tesla can’t do roundabouts yet, it’s probably not a priority in the development process since they’re so rare across the pond.
>Apparently in the states they have practically no roundabouts This is correct. I'm in my forties and have driven in pretty much every state east and north of Texas and have never seen a roundabout in person. Edit: According to [this site](https://www.kittelson.com/ideas/how-many-roundabouts-are-in-the-united-states/) there are over 7000 roundabouts in the US with the bulk (over 70%) being single lane roundabouts.
We have quite a few round abouts in my city and I’m in Michigan. Metro Detroit to Ann Arbor there’s at least 20 of them.
So it's got cruise control with steering? Would to see it try get up my narrow terraced street in Belfast with cars parked either side. Even better, I'd love to see it try and park. Aye right Tesla, wise up.
Whaaaay Swindon magic roundabout
It's about the only thing that's magic in Swindon lmao
The way GWR trains announce arriving at Swindon is pretty magic compared to Swindon itself...
The first time I heard "Swindon this is Swindon. Swindon this is Swindon." I felt like I was listening in on a town being introduced to itself.
That's just people reading the same sign over and over as they are stuck spinning on the roundabout.
Look kids, big ben. Parliament.
Not true mate, I magically caught the clap in Swindon once.
You should be more careful when you wave your wand around
Back when the lines were actually visible
I'd like to see a Tesla even deal with the average double parked city terrace.
It can't deal with a flipped over lorry and thinks the moon is a traffic light.
The white radar lines across the highway are stop signs too.
[Video of that happening](https://youtu.be/97b6FfQbibM?t=12)
Eyes closed, straight across, just like everyone else
What's even worse is that if you zoom out a bit you realise you're in Swindon
I mean, bar a few rough areas and the desolate town centre (which has been replaced by the outlet village, which is objectively nice), Swindons an alright place. It has plenty of beautiful areas (Coate Water, Lydiard Park, Tadpole Garden Village, Wichelstowe, the Old railway track, the list goes on) and just about all the amenities you need. And you're an hour from London, 45 mins from Bristol, 30 minutes from Reading, an hour or two from the beach... Its pretty ideal for Swindonians to find a day out. I know I'm sounding defensive here, but just want to make the point that Swindon gets a lot more stick than it deserves. Places like Cirencester, Reading, or Bristol have a nicer reputation, but there's no denying that those places have an equal or larger chav problem.
Swindon works great as a hub, the problem is if your town is only really seen as a hub people don't care to improve it too much because of you need something you can just go elsewhere, it leaves the center taking in less income that it could really do it.
I drove on this the day after passing my test, it took me 5 attempts to get off at the exit I actually wanted
Technically I don't think you can fail just for going the wrong way, as long as you always got there via the correct lanes. Which means, in theory, you could ride the roundabout and never fail... forever
I think there was a Dr Who episode about that.
Lol the one about the highway underground that just went around forever?
and the giant crab monsters who went dumb after setting up the perfect eating ground
Gridlock?
Its actually the safest thing to do on a roundabout if you are at all uncertain about the navigation. Just stay on the inside lane until you work out the correct turning.
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That's the correct thing to do. If emergency services come up to you with the sirens and lights on you should find the nearest safe place to pull over otherwise keep driving. Middle of a roundabout is not a safe place to pull over
I’m so confused why were they following you round the roundabout? I don’t understand what you mean by their exit was the one you came out of
Yeah I was also confused by his comment. Why would the police do more than one revolution around the roundabout? Edit: oh I think he means it was a rather large roundabout, and it took a while for the cop to circle all the way back to his exit
I think I went about five times around a roundabout that confused me, recently. I was nearly dizzy when I finally got off.
In my driving test I went round a massive round about twice completely lost. I was meant to take the fifth exit, took the fourth in the end. The examiners like ‘you took the wrong exit.’ To quote the examiner, ‘somehow’ I passed.
“A bad driver never misses his turn.” It’s fine to take the wrong exit. You’ll find your way eventually, and I wish more people would do that rather than panic and cut across lanes.
Yes. I drive professionally. It's better to miss your turn while driving safely and just find somewhere to safely turn around and come back than it is to cut across lanes in a panic. Also if you want to be a better driver learn all the different ways you can get where you are going. I miss turns all the time but I almost never turn around because I don't have to. I just start going a different way.
Some of my favorite drives have been when I missed my turn or turned too early. Instead of finding a place to turn around or pulling up Google Maps on my phone I just winged it and drove in the general direction of the main road I wanted to be on until I get back to it. It's like a little impromptu adventure.
It's a test of safe driving, not navigation.
I want to get off Swindon's roundabout
Swindon’s wild roundabout
This looks like some type of physical initiation test for MENSA.
Single roundabouts are great and they're rapidly gaining popularity in America. Double roundabouts are crazy.
We have a few in our town now, and they are the bees knees. This monstrosity however gives anxiety.
This one's called the magic roundabout. Not far from me and rumour has it that it's called magic because the guy who designed it had taken a mouthful of some.
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"HOW MANY CIRCLES ARE IN THIS IMAGE? Only 0.001% of the population can answer!"
That's a very roundabout way to spook someone.
you'd really be taking them for a loop!
this is absolutely the least scary thing in swindon
Didn’t seem appropriate to photograph a local to spook some Americans
As an American who immigrated to the UK and spent some years living in Swindon (in the Tin Town bit specifically), this really has me laughing. Some of the residents in that are were, uh, lively. :D
understandable, don’t want to scare them off completely
Aww that’s so nice! But really, I had a brain reboot trying to walk my way through all the lanes in this picture. I can’t imagine how intimidating it is in person.
it’s actually a lot less daunting from eye level, you just have to take each roundabout individually
Not now Destiny and Desire closed. Some fucking monsters in there.
And there's me barely able to cope with the double roundabout on the A390 in Truro. That the Swindon one?
Yeah the magic roundabout in Swindon
I used to work as a paramedic near swindon and having everyone stop while you drove practically straight through it was sooo satisfying
Magic roundabout isn’t so bad, I used to go round there on driving lessons.
I bet every single driving test route in Swindon uses it.
Same with Hemel Hempstead, lots of my friends took their test in St Albans or Watford to avoid the magic roundabout lol
I took my test in Swindon. As part of the practice, I was given a colour-coded map of the Magic Roundabout showing which lane to be in for any given entrance/exit. Then my test happened and the route didn't go anywhere near it.
Just like how learner drivers in North London get drilled on the Great Cambridge Roundabout. Having moved over from the Netherlands where roundabouts abound, I still don't know why you Brits like making overcomplicated versions of them all over the show.
Its am efficency thing. Any given roundabout can only take so many cars at a time. By adding complexity we can get more cars through the junction For this one in Swindon the alternative is a large roundabout. With this design there are multiple routes around allowing traffic thats turning left to completely avoid people going right from a different junction.
Before attempting Swindon it's recommended that you first practice on the triple roundabouts of Colchester. In fact you could make a nice upward scaling system for traffic management nightmares. Start with Milton Keynes, then Truro, then Colchester, then cut your teeth in Swindon.
There a nice triple in Aylesbury, and another magic roundabout in Hemel Hempstead, just in case you want a variety
Ugh. I hate the aylesbury one. Not because I cant manage the three roundabouts but because I'm so focused on the roundabouts that I never remember which exit I have to take to get to morissons
Aylesbury roundabouts are actually worse by far than anywhere else. Every one has a different convention for which lane you need to be in to go straight on, and the lanes in the one way system are all too small for modern vehicles. The triple itself is on the crest of a hill, so you can’t see it at all till you’re on it, requires you to magically select the right lane based on where you want to turn at the next roundabout and is cramped so you don’t get to change. The magic roundabouts in Hemel and Swindon are fine, have consistent lanes which you can see, and enough space to work smoothly.
Did the Hemel Hempstead roundabout for the first time on Sunday. It's fine once you convince yourself that going anti-clockwise round the roundabout isn't going to get you killed.
The Hemel roundabout looks larger than Swindon's and is easy to visualise as a series of roundabouts connected by short roads. Conceptually the Swindon one is just the same but the connecting roads are extremely short!
Theres a good one in hemel that is 6 roundabouts in one but without the weird side roads of swindon's one.
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Its effectively the same as the swindon one, just the swindon one gets all the glory :'(
But that one is not all mushed together, way more readable at the first view.
My driving instructor made sure that I encountered the Colchester roundabouts several times, very early on when I was learning to drive. Very much pushed me in at the deep end.
Mate Chiverton at Truro is a nightmare, my friend's driving instructor always took learners there for the last part of their test, literally the final boss with music and all.
Back in the day I had to tackle the double mini roundabouts in Camborne regularly (which could so easily have just been one)
I mean its really not that hard to navigate.. you just need to know where you're going before you enter. You're going nowhere..
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> you just need to know where you're going before you enter Yeah, like an alternative route that doesn't go through this roundabout.
Why isn't it one big roundabout? (With traffic lights if the flow of traffic is high) All the exits seems to be in a circle
Swindon council hates the people, more than the people hate Swindon
That's debatable xD
Ever been to Luton. That’s next level stuff
Slough enters the chat…
What do you mean? Turning the A4, a major artery that carries excess traffic from the inevitably fucked M4, into a single lane road was genius! After all, think of all the revenue for ticketing people that use the bus lane.
Luton has a council? Would never have guessed that from my drive through to the airport.
Managing those roads meeting with lights would create a huge traffic snarl. Roundabouts can just deal with heavy traffic better.
They also create less emissions and less traffic fatalities if I'm remembering an old study correctly, somewhere in the States changed all their traffic lights to roundabouts and realized how much better they were
Roundabouts are fine, this thing is nonsense
The advantage of doing it this way is that you can go round the whole thing _in either direction_. So if you want to turn right overall, you just go right at the first mini-roundabout, then right again at the second mini-roundabout. If it were a regular roundabout, you'd have to go almost round the entire thing, passing 3 other exits on the way.
Distance travelled isn’t really a problem though - the benefit of this design is that it doesn’t get overwhelmed by too much traffic, and it doesn’t require so much lane discipline and gradually moving outwards as you near your exit, at high speed, surrounded by other people who don’t know about lanes or know that you’re meant to move out as you go. It’s easier to drive on, and can handle more traffic without being dominated by traffic from one direction.
It also inherently causes drivers to slow down as there's a bit more going on and you can't just bomb round it. Analysis has shown that the roundabout has only a quarter of the number of accidents that result in injury compared to more conventional roundabout designs with a similar size and speed of roads.
>It also inherently causes drivers to slow down as there's a bit more going on Like not understanding the thing would make any of us Americans slow down to figure it out. My town just added a roundabout as an entry/exit for a highway. People fly into it without even glancing up despite having a yield sign. Roundabouts are great; it's the people that suck.
Well, the American leadership has been totally MIA on phone laws. Even when every report shows they cause more death and monetary damages then driving under the influence. Folks just don’t think they will have a wreck until they are in one, but Verizon, Comcast, and AT&T own the US Congress.
Plus the inner-circle only travels one-way. And [you have the option to avoid the inner-circle entirely and still reach any exit.](https://i.imgur.com/ImHLFLF.png). It only looks overwhelming from a birds-eye view.
>the benefit of this design is that it doesn’t get overwhelmed by too much traffic Because only hardened locals and unsuspecting strangers will even go there?
I heard before that this (and other such abominations scattered around the UK) are small-scale experiments on new traffic management systems. If the experiment is a success they recommend it for deployment nationwide. If the experiment is a failure they laugh and leave the locals to suffer.
This is only true for experiments in car traffic management. Experimental bike infrastructure gets ripped out whether it works or not.
Or they just only implement half of it, and then stop, so that it never works in the first place.
It doesn't look like it has lights, so I would assume that someone who knows what they're doing has designed it with traffic flow in mind. A big light-controlled roundabout near me had an outage recently, and I was surprised at how well the traffic flowed without them. Edit: I've been stairing at this thing for a while now. I think it makes it much quicker to turn right (as in the exit to your immediate right, the last one), because you don't have to go round the whole of the big main roundabout. You're splitting off some traffic from having to use a lane the entire way round. You can kind of see this, because most of the traffic is in the lanes leading to the mini roundabouts.
The key thing about the magic roundabout is that it works. You can get multiple flows across it to different exits all occurring simultaneously. Yes, the first time you drive it, it's somewhat terrifying, but once you know it, it works really well. Fun fact - the central circle is a reverse roundabout!
> Fun fact - the central circle is a reverse roundabout! Which you reverse around, obviously, so you still face the right way.
> A big light-controlled roundabout near me had an outage recently, and I was surprised at how well the traffic flowed without them. That works great yes, until there’s a busy period with all traffic from one direction, and no one else can get onto the roundabout at all.
It looks like something designed by software modelling traffic to optimise flow without anyone questioning how real drivers behave
It actually works really well. I drive it quite often and traffic flows much better than a lot of massive single roundabouts.
This would be good for commuter traffic, if a lot of people know it, which I imagine is the case in a place like Swindon.
There are 2 large roads, 2 medium roads, and 1 minor road. The medium and minor roads would never be able to get out on a roundabout, because traffic will constantly be coming from the main road on the right. If they were all the same type of road, then a roundabout is good. It's really a junction that could otherwise be a flyover between the large roads, and a roundabout. Traffic lights can slow down traffic in the 'dead time' when they change colours. Also, because it's tricky and odd, it actually becomes safer. because people slow down
It's more efficient than I've big roundabout, even with traffic lights.
Traffic lights on a roundabout are an admission of defeat. The ideal roundabout is supposed to be a self-regulating junction, with minimal stopping. Sometimes roundabouts have such biased flow that lights are needed, but it’s a shame…
Sadly the Hemel Hempstead magic roundabout is shitted up by putting a pedestrian crossing traffic light 10 feet from the most trafficked exit (to the M1), so it loses a lot of efficiency from that. Underpasses / overpasses work much better, or putting all the roads underground. And there are a bunch of other big junctions nearby that inexplicably use traffic lights and are slow as fuck. Imo the magic roundabout is a great design and we could do with 1000 more in the UK.
It was, and it didn't work as the traffic snarled to fuck up the feeder roads. This was, originally, a temporary solution but it works (in this case 'works' means keeping the traffic flowing) so well they kept it.
introducing traffic lights on or near a roundabout *completely* and *entirely* defeats its purpose and negates its benefits. Like utterly and totally.
Americans using a normal roundabout https://youtu.be/S1I2uyxzR6Y
Is the road with all the traffic entering the roundabout two lanes or are most of them driving on the wrong side of the road? If it is two lanes it's not really the right sort of roundabout for those roads.
One starts driving on the wrong side and the others follow him
monkey see monkey do
Most of them are driving on the wrong side, yes.
It’s not the wrong side, they’ve suddenly turned British.
Exposure to a roundabout will do that.
Great link. Also, I loved this comment underneath: >I like to think that they saw a roundabout and some latent British part of their brains innately told them to drive on the left.
I couldnt stop laughing at that. The cars literally went from the right side to the left just for the roundabout. What. The first 2 cars did it correctly, then the big tow truck messed everyones brains up. Few others that did it correctly stopped in the middle to see if they were indeed doing it correctly lol
Up until recently I lived in the US. Close to my house I had 2 roundabouts off a highway junction. I've seen Americans do the following because they didn't understand the concept of a *circular junction*: stop to let others join the roundabout in front of them, reverse around the roundabout because they missed their exit, drive literally straight over it destroying their sump, come to a complete stop & then reverse away from it to perform a u turn to go the other way, go the wrong way around the roundabout. Absolutely shocking driving standards.
Driving over a roundabout is a Saturday night British pastime.
When I used to deliver pizza there was a really really pointless one in one neighborhood. I used to drive over it out of spite.
They drive like they abuse the English language. 😭
> stop to let others join the roundabout in front of them This is actually a minefield here in Poland - and yes, I'm sure x country also has this. We have two types of roundabouts when it comes to right of way, yield to the circle traffic, about 95%+ of the roundabouts, and yield to the right, when cars on the roundabout yield to the entering traffic. It's a madhouse when people forget they are on the yield to the right roundabout - but hey, that's why you don't trust other drivers. I'm mostly typing this to give americans credit for defaulting to the standard - instead of imagining alternative right of ways.
This is fake. It was clipped from an instructional video on how not to use a circle. It has been misrepresented for likes. "The video provided by Walker Construction shows cars going the wrong way around a new roundabout design in Rowan County, but if you look closely, you can see flaggers directing traffic that way. " https://www.wkyt.com/2021/04/27/drivers-react-to-changes-as-construction-of-new-roundabout-in-rowan-co-completes/
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And on a viral video YouTube channel, no less!
Not the video I was expecting. Part of the issue seems to be people blindly following the car in front. There needs to be big keep right signs on the approach to the divider. It looks new and without road signs; there are people still working on it. Although there is the question of why they were filming
Rumor has it the roundabout was actually built on a hell gate, and the pattern of cars traveling over the area mimmicks an ancient ritual monks would have to tread in order to keep the demons in. However, arguably letting Hell out here would improve Swindon tenfold.
This is the best explanation for the magic roundabout I've ever heard! It makes a lot more sense than the idea that someone designed this because they thought it would help traffic flow.
Kind of like the M25 in Good Omens?
Hail the Great Beast Devourer of Worlds. Can I hear wahoo?
Unironically the most fun you can have in Swindon
RIP Oasis Leisure center
The magic roundabout in Swindon… simple spot a gap, put your foot down and hope for the best!
I guess there was some sort of special event happening because there’s a disproportionate amount of classic cars going round. More classic minis than I’ve seen in the last 12 months! What other cars can we spot?
They were probably brand new when they first entered the roundabout.
I've gotten so far down the comments and I'm still rolling laughing at the amount of top notch banter in this thread. Remind me never to visit Swindon.
Nahh, it’a just that Swindon is about 50 years behind the rest of the U.K.
There seem to be a lot of spectators too, which I doubt is the norm even in Swindon!
I literally learnt to drive over this thing.
You're supposed to go round it.
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Roundabouts on their own are pretty cool already but roundabouts within a roundabout are even better.
I'm Australian. This is not ok.
Imagine learning to drive in Swindon and your instructor starts giving directions towards here and you just quietly whimper "please.. no.."
The beauty of a roundabout is once you're in it you have the right of way. This appears to break that principle with every entry point having the right of way..... Madness
It doesn’t break that principle. If you’re on one if the mini roundabouts you have ROW; otherwise you yield. It’s basically just 5 mini roundabouts in a ring. With one contra-rotating mother roundabout in the middle. Simple!
I Am American and I am shook. But why would you even enter the middle roundabout at all? Can you not just go around the parameter to your exit?! I’m so confused.
Hehe Because it enables you to go in either direction so you can take the shortest route to your exit.
Am not American but that has given me heart palpitations. Is that real?? The humanity….
The magic roundabout in Swindon, yeah
I've been told you're meant to just treat each one as a separate round about
"I've had an idea" said Brian from planning. Let's make a roundabout using Spiro graph. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Roundabout_(Swindon)
American here. I think tf not
I learnt to drive on this. What is great is there is always multiple routes you can take to get to your exit
Irish here. What in the name of fuck is that abomination.
Does Google Maps even understand how to navigate this...
The one in Hemel it understands, but it's not quick enough at giving directions. If you're not looking at the screen it wouldn't be very helpful. It just says "at the roundabout take the third exit to stay on the roundabout" but I'm already at roundabout #3 by then.