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Comment by marssaxman | Hacker News Reader

I'm glad they're excited, but I hope I never encounter this.

It may be unusual there, but in the UK we have loads. Some are smaller than this: the minimum roundabout is just a paint circle. They aren't a problem

Most people here actually prefer roundabouts to traffic lights because you keep moving (although this is partly selection bias- traffic lights are deployed at junctions where a roundabout would fail to evenly arbitrate the different flows )

You may feel less enthusiastic about it once you watch the linked video. I wouldn’t exactly call it a roundabout. That’s only what’s at the center of it.

Ok fair enough, that extra bit does make it slightly more complicated. Having said that though, I would not be fazed by this, and I don't think many UK drivers would be - because we already deal with many that have more parts. When I was learning to drive, I found a particular triple roundabout quite painful but no longer have any difficulty.

There are two skills you need to pick up to deal with any roundabout system. The first is judgement of how distant other vehicles need to be before you can enter. As a learner I used to irritate the drivers behind me by being far too cautious; on a busy roundabout you can't expect an enormous gap, so you need to know what length of gap the other drivers will expect you to take advantage of. This you can only learn from experience.

The other is to plan your route, because you need to choose your entry lane based on where you want to go. These days your navigation app will probably tell you the best entry lane.

You guys like roundabouts so much you've gone recursive.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Roundabout_(Swindon)

(To be clear I like roundabouts)

That one is a bit odd, because the central bit looks like a roundabout but is not. To navigate it you need to forget the central bit and focus on the five mini roundabouts

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