It is truly magic

gmtom@lemmy.world to Lemmy Shitpost@lemmy.world – 866 points –
107

I used to live nearby! Loved that silly thing, just don’t treat it like one big roundabout - it’s six chained roundabouts that you can use individually; both green and red routes are valid and legal for the same destination:

Could someone flip this for those of us who drive on the right?

But the drawn arrows already imply driving on the right side? Or did this get edited?

i was literally just thinking - the cars are driving on the left and the arrows are all driving on the right 😂

Did you Photoshop out all the traffic lights??

Traffic lights make roundabouts pointless, unless they’re on a quick cycle used to ‘group’ cars entering a multi-lane roundabout.

If your population didn’t grow up with roundabouts though, and treats them like YOLO free for alls… then you might need lights

My hometown installed roundabouts, with 4 way stop signs. Like, why.

My town built lots of roundabouts, and the population are used to them, but they have a problem with unbalanced traffic, and it's been growing, so traffic has been getting more unbalanced - more people coming from directions the engineers who planned the road didn't expect

The real problem, of course, is that though they are trying they are not able to replace the traffic with mass transit. The buses get stuck in the same traffic, light rail seems impossible, even with political will

You meant, roundabouts make traffic lights pointless?

Dare I say this is a chicken:egg situation - which is making the other redundant?

Saving the operational costs of traffic lights is the biggest pro of roundabouts. Cars inside a roundabout always have priority and cars who wanna enter it have to yield.

Swiss replaced most large interections with roundabouts in the whole country about 15 years ago. It worked out.

i don’t think there are any. priority is based on how much you think you could take rival vehicles in a fight.

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Having driven on that magic roundabout as well as the one in Swindon I can tell you that most minds can't comprehend them

I don't mind the complexity of it, but they need to make it bigger to make lane changes possible. That and experienced drivers are too impatient for new drivers to figure it out.

Most people i see on a daily basis can't hndle a normal 2 lane roundabout, ao i'm not sure if that would help

Traffic inside the roundabout has priority, meaning you wait to go in until no one comes from left (roundabouts are always counter-clock). That difficult?

Yeah, everyone knows how a roundabout works but if you've never seen several of them combined like this then it can take you by surprise if you were just expecting one big one

I enjoy this meme. Truly a Lemmy original.

It's a step up from beans & jeans, for sure.

Shhhh! Just to mention it might bring it back!

Are you saying you're only.....interested in important updates?

Not at all!! I'm being a bit tongue in cheek really. I enjoy these things, but the jeans one went on a bit long.

(Que someone to create a car driving around some jeans for 18 hours to shock yoga pants wearers)

Ah sorry there was an older Lemmy original meme. Was a typical survey question, one of the options was "only alert me on important updates" or some such. Spawned like two straight weeks of stroganoff memes. Google doesn't search lemmy well or I'd link you the page

I see. I joined during the exodus (and the three days no poop)

there are many roundabouts in my American city and sometimes the Americans even use them correctly

Of course I know how to use a roundabout! Step one: close eyes Step two: floor it Step three: pray Works every time!

You joke. I have personally seen someone use a roundabout like a launch ramp and survive.

I've seen the end result of someone trying to use a roundabout as a launch ramp. I don't think their car, stuck in the middle of the roundabout, survived.

We have a roundabout with a pond. The ducks like it, and they're really disturbed

I learned to drive in a town where the on ramp to the highway came out of a roundabout so I actually did some learning! :)

I have one within 5 minutes heading to the beach and you can always see the confused travelers looping lol

American? Do you mean USAEan?

Ok. I get it. There are people in the Americas that are not from the US. But do you call people from the United Mexican States "Unitied Mexican Stateans"? No, that sounds ridiculous. I think that it's silly anyway to call everyone from either Americas "American" anyway; they are two different continents! "North American" or "South American" would be better, if you must get so broad with your adjectives (but really, continent-wide generalizations of people are rarely useful anyway). Sorry for the rant.

There was a meme posted earlier that used the term "USAean". They were referring to that i think

Yeah I went ultra meta. The first countermeme said USAean instead of American, and then one of the topish comments was "USAean? Do you mean American?"

1: I was making a meta joke, and this point isnt really your fault

2: Canada takes up more of North America than the States does, and no one says "United States of Mexico", they say Mexico. Mexico is also not a continent that is shared with other Countries. In general I'm not going to fight people referring to the States as America, but you arguement is BAD

It's not about size. It's the fact that the United States of America has the word "America" in it. And I don't refer to the US as "America" (unless I'm being cheeky, though in those cases, I spell it 'Murica), but I do refer to people from the US as "American".

And I know this is all kinda pedantic. I just think it's fun to talk about words. I get the feeling you read some snark into my pervious comment, but that really wasn't my goal.

Oh, yeah, I totally misread your tone and point, my bad. You're right on there not really being an better word for People of the US than American, although now that I think about it "Statesman" sounds pretty nifty

I'm just being a little pedantic here, but Canada is only about 100k miles or so bigger than the US and much more of Canada is unlivable unless you count Texas and Florida as being unlivable, because I do.

There's also about 10x as many Americans as Canadians.

I'm just being a little pedantic here, but miles are only a unit to measure distance not area.

Continent wide generalizations work just fine for 2 of them. Damn Australians an penguins are up to something, I'm sure of it!

They're not two different continents thought?

North America and South America are 2 continents in a lot of models. What definition are you using that has them as one? I'm always pretty skeptical of the ones that have Europe and Asia but then just America.

Yes Eurasia is 1 continent too, arguably it should be afroeurasia as well.

It is connected by land, depending on your definition I can see the case for it, but it's not really a useful definition.

North and South are their own plates

Africa is it’s own plate

So what are you arguing?

?? Plates dont equal continents? Or do you think Turkey is its own continent? And the east coast of Africa is a seperate continent to the rest of Africa?

I am asking what they are supplementing their argument with

Continents are large landmass separated by oceans. That's the working definition, it's not a particularly precise definition, but it's the generally accepted one.

Would you agree then that the Panama Canal separates the two Americas?

No, because that sets a president that creates much bigger problems than the "problem" it solves.

It's okay, man. I saw the post you're referencing at least.

xD I went a little too hard on the meta, its to be expected =P

My American city has at least 2 roundabouts in it, and I happen to get confused by at least one of them every time I'm trying to get somewhere.

Based and freedom-pilled. Ignorance out for America, brother comrade.

To be fair, it's the most American roundabout ever. Changing numbers of lanes, stop lights around it, and completely unintuitive. I seem to always be one lane more to the right of where I thought I needed to be.

Personally, I would have used the Swindon magic roundabout, but this works too.

The less people that know about Swindon the better.

Can confirm. I tried 2 laps in the roundabout in front of Kaiser and people lost their minds 😂

Only if there's traffic. It says it only takes a minute without traffic.

I'd like to return to the simple days of lemme beans, please.

I do not understand :(

I think the joke is people keep posting the "you can drive x hours and still be in y location", but really, you can drive indefinitely in one neighborhood, without every leaving. You could stay in the roundabout for as long as you want, just like you can drive from South Africa to Finland, or whatever.

Yes, that was my first thought as well.
But the Google Maps screenshot says 0.2 mile which means that it's just exactly one time around in the roundabout and not insanely often, so that's not the case here.
I looked up the roundabout to see if there's any reason why you'd need so long (e.g. it's not really for driving and you could be 1mph/kmh or so, but it looks like you can drive normally on it.

Pretty sure the time is just edited, unless there's some way to tell Google "Yes have me circle this roundabout a bazillion times"

what's the origin of this meme? I've seen several versions of this same theme

they keep getting progressively more unhinged and im on board

they keep getting progressively more unhinged

Also see: England.

The biggest my city has is 2 lanes and 5 exits. That’s pretty easy; 1st or 2nd exit is ok in the right lane, anything else in the left, always yield to left lane.

This 4 lane 6 exit shit is wild. Oh, and you drive on the left for some extra “what the fuck?”

Nothing wrong with driving on the left, we've been doing it since before cars. It helps to keep your sword arm closer to opposing traffic.

Didn’t say there was anything wrong with it, but whichever side you learn on it’s not going to be an easy switch.

Is that really why? Wild

It's a pretty easy switch, the differences are all mirrored

It took me about an hour of driving to get used to the other way

Thank you. This is the meme that Lemmy has needed for the last week.

We have shitloads of roundabouts all over the country but OK.

While we're on the subject though, they're fucking great!

You have failed to notice that the Magic Roundabout isn't a roundabout

It's six roundabouts

Your entire puny American consciousness would literally disintegrate on arrival at the first one

Two way street roundabouts aren't even a thing I've seen in person, ours all seem to be one way, so this would definitely be weird to me.

It's more confusing looking at it from a top view. When driving it's loads easier. I was expecting a mind numbing event first time I drove it but it wasn't that bad really.