You can get a strange nickname as a city or village. Examples of this are Den Helder with ‘the Gibraltar of the north’ or Dallas with ‘Big D’, which evokes other associations. The American city of Carmel also has a separate nickname: the roundabout city. This is because there are more than 100 roundabouts. They applied that crazy knowledge to lay down this special roundabout.
They call the roundabout ‘the double teardrop’. Previously, the road where this special roundabout is located was a crowded N-road. Initially, the idea was to make it safer by expanding it from four to six lanes. That plan was scrapped and before that this construction was placed at the most important intersections. And guess what? It works like a train!
The advantages of the special roundabout
An extensive investigation of IIHS (the American Highway Safety Insurance Institute) shows that the special roundabout is safer. For example, the number of accidents with injuries was 84 percent lower and the total number of accidents was more than halved. There were 63 percent fewer collisions. In addition to fewer accidents, there are even more benefits.
An unusual double-teardrop roundabout in Carmel, Indiana helped reduced injury crashes by 84% and reduced all crashes by nearly two-thirds according to an analysis by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) https://t.co/WDYIeAaMU4 pic.twitter.com/e3Z1grT2b6
— Miovision (@Miovision) August 24, 2021
For example, the number of traffic congestion went down by 90 percent. In addition, these roundabouts can be used in places where the road crosses a highway, such as in the video at the bottom of this message. You can then run the roundabout above or below the highway. The latter argument would account for the large reduction in accidents in Carmel.
The disadvantages of the roundabout
There are also a number of downsides to the double teardrop roundabout. For example, it costs a lot of money to install them and it can take a long time before construction is finished. In addition, one has to get used to the new traffic situation. According to IIHS residents also do not notice much of the decrease in accidents. So it is not just rose scent and moonshine, but statically it is a good solution.
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