Ok, I don’t know if you are talking about these new roundabouts and I won’t get to hear if you have any reaction to my comments but I’m guessing you are and I have to give my observations to someone!
So I went up and watched the stadium drive roundabout from the pedestrian bridge for a ½ hour tonight. Lincoln drivers have a lot to learn! It’s bad. Hilarious but scary. I would say over 75% of cars either straddled 2 lanes at one point or crossed lanes without knowing or needing to. No kidding. It looks like people enter the roundabout and spot where they want to exit and just head that way, not looking at lanes at all. Not even beginning in the correct lane, just sitting in both lanes pretty much and crossing into whichever one they want. And if there are no other cars around they just figure why stay in this lane when I can drive down the middle of the lane just as easy. It just shows nobody is looking at the lanes and just thinks its one big lane. Well technically that is reckless driving and most every driver on the roundabout would get a ticket for it. Where else in town do you see people straddling the center lane or sitting in a turn lane half in one lane and half in the other? You don’t. I sincerely hope this activity doesn’t continue when these things are loaded with cars during game days!!
Some more observations:
-Drivers coming off 10th street come flying down that road and the shape of the road makes it look like they can just continue to go straight and continue on to salt creek roadway without having to make any kind of circle on the roundabout. But the bridge to the left of them sort of blocks the roundabout and cars driving on it coming from their left. So it looked like people didn’t even think it was a roundabout but it was just a through lane on to salt creek road and didn’t yield at all and flew right through the roundabout.
-Also most cars never yielded. Maybe it was because there were no cars coming, but I seen one girl not even look to her left and just flew right into the roundabout. Then on the other hand there are people that stop before entering and there are no other cars even at the intersection.
-I saw one car that entered the inside lane so then they were unable to exit the roundabout at their turn and had to drive around it again. How often will this sort of thing happen?
-Ohhhh and the blinkers. One car came up to the intersection with their left blinker on, I thought are they really going to turn left here?. No they went around, still with their blinker on, and then as they approached the next roundabout they turned on their right blinker to enter that one; both incorrect uses. Other than that I saw NO blinkers used in 30 minutes of watching. NONE!
A listener on Drive Time mentioned something I thought about awhile back. Can you just drive around and around or is that illegal? Is it considered cruising after awhile? What if 6 cars decided to just go around and around not letting anyone on, is that illegal?
Another mentioned that there weren’t enough signs. Are you kidding me? Go look and it looks like a forest of signs already. There are yield signs all over the place not to mention arrows on the pavement. There are arrows when approaching that show if you are in a certain lane you can turn left or right! Ummm, shouldn’t it motion you to go straight into the roundabout or right to turn right? You can’t turn left at the entrance!!
Have I confused you enough yet? Good. After 30 minutes I had seen all I needed to.
I recommend you go watch from this birds-eye view. From the street you can’t see all the people crossing center lines riding in both lanes before, in, and after the roundabout.
Oh and while I was there football practice was letting out. One player had 2 or more tickets on his intrepid. He left them in his wipers, drove up over the curb, and drove down the sidewalk to get to stadium drive. Ah, Coach can take care of those tickets right? Another player made laps around the roundabout squealing his tires. Gotta love them kids!
Your eyes and ears on reality,
Scott
Welcome to all things Jack & Dave.
