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Published July 12, 2008 12:00 am - There's an old joke about a confused driver who entered a traffic circle and was never heard from again. He couldn't figure out who yields and so he just kept driving around and around. Now that we've all mastered driving over the humps and around the calming devices, we're going to have to collectively learn how to navigate a roundabout, similar to a traffic circle. We're going to have to learn to navigate a roundabout There's an old joke about a confused driver who entered a traffic circle and was never heard from again. He couldn't figure out who yields and so he just kept driving around and around.
Now that we've all mastered driving over the humps and around the calming devices, we're going to have to collectively learn how to navigate a roundabout, similar to a traffic circle. Our city's first is under construction at Main Street and Carter Drive at the entrance to Griffin Hospital. City officials are calling it a "roundabout" as opposed to a circle. In a circle, traffic entering a circle has the right-of-way. The French were using them more than 100 years ago. It's designed to make the five-street intersection -- two legs of Main, Carter, State and Acres -- less congested. The bigger picture is the widening of Main Street and resignalization of the intersection with 12th Avenue NE. Utility relocation has been ongoing for months. Main Street closed for construction this past Friday. "It will be Norman's first one but they are popular throughout the country and in Europe," the city's public works director Shawn O'Leary told a downtown business group this past week. O'Leary said discussions are ongoing about putting some public art in the center of the traffic circle. It could be a piece of sculpture or a mural. It would be appropriate to include Griffin Hospital staff in those discussions. The hospital was the city's eastern anchor for many years, long before Wal-Mart ever existed. The circle won't have the kind of volumes seen in other cities so it'll be a good learning experience for drivers. "We think this is a good application. There's not a lot of traffic there," O'Leary said. "In the future, we may see more of them." And who yields in a roundabout? "It's my understanding that cars entering the roundabout yield to those already in there," O'Leary said. And all this time, I thought if you made eye contact with another driver, you had to yield to them. The modern "roundabout" has one flaw. It's statistically safer than traditional intersections but cyclists can't seem to figure them out. They have a significantly increased crash rate at large roundabouts. n n n 
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