AUTONEWS

Turbo roundabouts: the smart roundabout to avoid accidents in the USA

Roundabouts were created to make traffic flow more quickly, avoiding, on the one hand, frequent accidents at intersections and, on the other, the limitations imposed by traffic lights. But they have started to become a problem themselves, as the volume of traffic requires a greater number of lanes and, with them, small accidents occur that stop the traffic that was supposed to help it flow more quickly. Experts in this matter point to “turbo roundabouts” as the solution.

As the number of exits from a roundabout increases, as well as the respective number of lanes circulating around a central point, drivers tend to change lanes more frequently, trying first to approach the central area where traffic flows. more quickly, and then head towards the lanes closest to the periphery on the approach to the desired exit. This constant switching of lanes to the left and right generates accidents, small collisions that disrupt traffic and, sometimes, even stop it.

The concept of roundabouts has been evolving, always acting on lane separations to divert the road leading to the first exit from the central roundabout, and more recently “turbo roundabouts” have begun to appear. In the USA, the first example of this solution appeared in Florida, and now the second has been presented in California, a 14.9 million dollar project aimed at distributing traffic more quickly and, above all, with less chance of causing accidents. 

“Turbo roundabouts” first appeared in the Netherlands in the 1990s, owing their name to their spiral shape, with the separators between lanes being slightly raised to discourage line changes. This solution does not aim to increase the average speed of vehicles, but rather to reduce the probability of an accident. See below how the system works.

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