I live in the UK, which has roundabouts, mini roundabouts, double and triple roundabouts, traffic-light controlled roundabouts, and magic roundabouts. They work perfectly fine.
The difference is that traffic flows very differently in the UK to the US. In fact, the way traffic flows in those two countries captures a lot of their cultural differences. In the US, everything needs a grand overarching theory and imposed order, which is why Americans need traffic lights, and why they’re so keen on a very specific set of liberties that allow them to freely live such similar lifestyles. The UK embraces mild chaos and ruthless pragmatism, with everyone finding locally optimal solutions to their own problems, so things like roundabouts fit well with the national mindset.
Try Spanish roundabouts. On the whole, poorly designed, implemented and regulated. On roundabouts with two or more lanes, laws favour those on the outside lane, so everyone takes the outside lane even if they are travelling 3/4 of the way round. As a result drivers who are in a position to take an exit, do not take that exit. In addition, indicators are not used by most drivers, or they simply leave their indicators on all the way round. In addition, it is not allowed to exit a roundabout from the inside lane even on to a two lane exit. In addition many roundabouts have three lanes to enter onto a two lane roundabout, or two into one, etc. No one knows the rules, or follows them, and no one seems to care, from the civil engineers right down to the end users. The only winners are repair shops.
In comparison, UK roundabouts are civilised examples of harmonious intellectual etiquette. Enjoy them.
[source] I learned to drive in Swindon, home of the Magic Roundabout.
Because the US largely "grew up with cars", the economy was built around the expectation that folks can drive to work. The population density of the US reflects this, and mass transit just doesn't work in small/middle America. That means everyone needs to be able to drive. If you can't drive, you can't work. That isn't the case in the UK, and you'll notice a lot of these "driver beware" analysis is explained by the fact that driving in the UK is seen as a privilege whereas it is a right in the US. This sort of "mild chaos" is prohibitive for a lot of would-be UK drivers, and they just take the bus.
I don't want to celebrate UK roads too much. The majority of roundabout users in the UK are not indicating properly. Too many people are stopping at them when they have priority. Lanes are just a suggestion and using the correct lane is an invitation for someone to drive into the left of you.
In other areas: enough people don't know how to use a slip road that it becomes a problem to those who do. Likewise the flashing ambers of a pelican crossing. Lane discipline is much worse than on the continent, to the point you can see it creating traffic jams. Lots of people are driving big cars without the confidence needed to remain in their own lane.
There are millions of drivers who've never passed a theory test. We could do with more ruthlessness.
I feel like you're singling out UK drivers without much evidence here, I've driven lots across continental Europe, although mostly Spain<>France<>Germany<>Nordics, but in all countries people tend to not indicate properly, inside of roundabouts or outside of them. I'll admit to people in the Nordics being slightly better at signaling, but they make up by being so scared and non-confident in their driving that their hesitation causes near-accidents, rather than the opposite.
Still, all across the world the average driver seems to below what I imagined the average driver to be, before I started driving myself.
It may be user error, but that doesn't mean roundabouts aren't a footgun. It only takes one driver who doesn't do everything correctly to cause problems. It's not much fun driving around in the correct lane, only for someone to pull alongside you to the left (equivalent of "right" in the US, of course!). I failed a driving test because someone cut across me on a roundabout.
"I failed a driving test because someone cut across me on a roundabout." That driver may have cut across you on that roundabout but that doesn't mean roundabouts are a footgun.
When comparing two interfaces and one allows a larger amount of user error that interface is inferior.
The point is roundabouts require more work to navigate correctly than a four way intersection with traffic lights. Thus drivers are more likely to navigate incorrectly.
> When comparing two interfaces and one allows a larger amount of user error that interface is inferior.
Seeing a safety issue and ignoring all other considerations is an excellent example of the ‘overarching theory and imposed order’ I argued that Britain rejects in my first comment.
Not gonna lie, I know about the flashing ambers of the pelican crossing, but they are uncommon enough, whenever I see one, I spend several seconds wondering what is happening, until it clicks it's one of these crossings.
The UK has an over-reliance on roundabouts for junctions with motorways and large roads. They are also missing out on Turbo roundabouts, which are super cool and very common in the Netherlands.
American, in an area getting more roundabouts. The two most heartfelt criticisms of roundabouts I've heard are:
- I have to pay attention every time I go through one. (Vs. having your mind elsewhere works fine with traffic lights? That might explain some of those T-bone crashes.)
From my PoV, roundabouts are generally a good thing. Mostly because local engineering standards for traffic lights are wretchedly low - so I can get where I'm going far faster through roundabouts.
My grandparents did this, but didn’t realise that it would be useful to write down what each password was for. They also didn’t realise that the spelling of a password was important.
lol well yeah. This book has fields for website, and A-Z legends, so presumably you put your Amazon password in the A section, and your hacker news password in the H section, and it's useful.
But I've been helping my MIL with some tech stuff lately. She signed up for Verizon 5G home internet, and cancelled her whole Comcast/Xfinity account. And was then surprised to find she wouldn't have cable TV anymore. :P
Also, Verizon coverage in her unit is terrible which she should know because she has them for her cell phone. But I guess she never realized that the internet was good at home because of the wifi from cable. sigh
That might be true for them to know it was AI. Which yes, was how I worded it. But not necessarily good enough for it to be differentiated from everything else.
For example, in the Bootstrap days everything looked like Bootstrap and users got used to that, even if users hadn't specifically heard of the CSS framework.
And two more were supposed to come from Aliexpress but they got stopped at customs because of asbestos contamination. That's why there's that gap on the southwest side.
My grandfather got his driving licence in 1940s Australia without doing a test, because the police sergeant who was supposed to conduct the test couldn't be bothered and was more interested in a ten-shilling note.
> Finally, we show that both free news access and media education improve media literacy skills (+0.08 to 0.26 sd), with larger effects among students taught by teachers with prior experience in media education.
They taught the teenagers how to question and interrogate the claims presented in the newspapers, which is far more effective than blindly branding 'MSM newspapers' as propaganda. (The study was conducted in France; are you sure that conventional French newspapers are propaganda of any inclination?)
I used to read the Grauniad, but I've become distrustful of it over the past few years because of how aggressively it panders to my sensibilities and biases. Also, it doesn't pursue any story more than any other broadsheet would; it's just a matter of what stories it chooses to pursue.
Outside of monasteries, the intersection of men who were literate and men who were directly involved in food production was tiny.
Farming men weren’t cooking their midday meal out in the fields; they took some bread and maybe some protein out with them at the start of their working day.
> Outside of monasteries, the intersection of men who were literate and men who were directly involved in food production was tiny
Higher than that. While the educated men likely did not do much farm labor (depending on the local details they may have been out there during harvest when all hands were needed), they had to ensure there were enough slaves to do that. Most of them were also well aware that they were one bad harvest from starvation and so paid attention to food production.
> Farming men weren’t cooking their midday meal out in the fields; they took some bread and maybe some protein out with them at the start of their working day.
That depends on the culture. The famous Spanish dish Paella was men cooking in the fields.
One observation I made when I was a teacher was that the more we did to help students (as a cohort) with their mental health, the worse it became. My theory is that teenagers are experimenting with different identities, so when you give them a seminar on anxiety and depression, some of them try those on for size. Moral of the story: trying to pre-emptively solve a problem can cause the problem or cause a different problem.
I once heard a lecture from an attorney, one of his tenets was as to completely avoid topics you don’t want opposing council to clue in on and attack. Don’t they to preempt it, just ignore it entirely unless you’re forced to confront it.
The analogy was “don’t tell your kid not to stick crayons in their nose” - otherwise, well, they most certainly will latch on to the topic and do so.
Reminds me of the task “don’t think of a pink elephant.” The first thing you do is think of a pink elephant.
The solution is to land on what you want your audience to do in the affirmative. For the pink elephant you can say, “Don’t think of a pink elephant: put your mental energy into imagining Mikey mouse riding a surf board.”
Similarly, here we can say something like “If you’re feeling suicidal, do x.” I’m not sure what x should be. Maybe call a hotline. I would have to think more about it, but the point is that landing on an affirmative action in this manner will offset the “pink elephant” effect.
I would say you mention it when the subject has already come up. Probably do not however devote an entire class period or a special school assembly to it.
> the more we did to help students (as a cohort) with their mental health, the worse it became
An equally plausible explanation is that when the school had zero resources to help kids with depression or other mental health problems they choose to keep their mouths shut and suffer it in silence.
Once the school started paying attention to the issue, it started surfacing people with pre-existing problems who had not previously had anyone to talk to about it.
The difference is that traffic flows very differently in the UK to the US. In fact, the way traffic flows in those two countries captures a lot of their cultural differences. In the US, everything needs a grand overarching theory and imposed order, which is why Americans need traffic lights, and why they’re so keen on a very specific set of liberties that allow them to freely live such similar lifestyles. The UK embraces mild chaos and ruthless pragmatism, with everyone finding locally optimal solutions to their own problems, so things like roundabouts fit well with the national mindset.
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