Did you know.. America doesn’t have any?
Or… when I say it doesn’t have any.. I mean it has approximately 3,000 roundabouts (as of 2011) in the entire country. Now.. 3,000 might seem like a lot to you.. but bearing in mind that the USA is… a substantial size bigger than the UK, it should definitely not seem like a lot when we consider that the UK has around 25,000 roundabouts (as of 2009). Weird, huh? I would be curious to discover how many Australia and New Zealand have. Methinks lots?
Now.. I only realised this when my sister came back from a school trip to Missouri (strange place to go on a school trip, I know) and she said that she had seen her first American roundabout. Now.. my family is reasonably well travelled, especially around the USA, and it had never occurred to me that I had never seen one, so I immediately jumped on all of my American friends and asked them about this strange phenomenon.
The most popular response I received? “What’s a roundabout” O.O After a brief explanation, some people still didn’t have the faintest idea about what I was talking about.. but most realised, “Ooooh, traffic circles!” Yes. those old fashioned things that Britain has moved on from. Them. If you look at my medals, you'll see I have a
LOL Worthy one about roundabouts. That was in direct reply to Jade. Tells you what the Americans know about roundabouts!
But most of this chat was with people from a different RP game, which is more live-text-based... and by this point I had been raving about how Americans could ever be allowed to drive in the UK, and a few of them hastened to inform me that they, in fact, had at least three within ten miles of where they lived. It was a good moment for me when I could tell them that I could drive for about 20 minutes and easily happen across 30 of them. Round one to the Brits.
I also took immense pleasure in explaining to them what a “Magic” Roundabout was. Wikipedia definition as follows: “This roundabout is at a junction of five (or more) roads and consists of a two-way road around the central island with five (or more) mini-roundabouts where it meets the incoming roads. Traffic may proceed around the main roundabout either clockwise via the outer lanes, or anticlockwise using the inner lanes next to the central island. At each mini-roundabout the usual clockwise flow applies.”
Look:
Isn't it beautiful? I live about 20 minutes from that one. If the picture is confusing, here's a drawing of a different one:
I have to admit that I LOVE driving around Magic Roundabouts, and am fortunate enough to have three of them within 40 minutes of my house. Yay. But it went deeper for the Americans. Apparently they don’t know what a mini-roundabout is. It took me a while to recover from this, because, let’s face it, roundabouts are such a massive part of driving in the UK.
One friend in particular began to show me pictures on the internet of a few roundabouts near him. He thought they were mildly impressive. They weren’t. My Magic Roundabouts easily trumped him, as well as showing him the Handy Cross roundabout in High Wycombe (just a stone’s throw away from one of the (in)famous Magic Roundabouts near me, which is an impressive feat if you cross it alive.
I suppose a lot of you will find this incredibly dull.. but they fun. Much more exciting that traffic lights.
