Comments by "Laurence Fraser" (@laurencefraser) on "Can Paths Save America's Suburbs?" video.

  1. they're less complicated for the driver to deal with while also forcing them to slow down (but not stop). Super busy roundabouts (be they very small, very large, or very complicated, for differing reasons) are kind of a nightmare for pedestrians, but for medium sized roundabouts that see more middling traffic levels it actually would make sense for the result to be pretty good.
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  2. it's not too difficult to make a pedestrian friendly roundabout... but it's also very easy to make one that's worse than a regular intersection. That and traffic conditions matter. Certainly, medium sized roundabouts with middling traffic levels, a roundabout is almost certainly very favourable for pedestrians... but I've seen a couple in areas I've lived in or regularly traveled through where the combination of the size and design of the roundabout with the amount of traffic going through it actually made it substantially Worse for pedestrians than the regular intersection it replaced (mind you, those roundabouts were installed primarily to force large trucks bound for other places to take the bypass rather than driving straight through the middle of the town's main commercial district, and not with any other particular goal in mind (to the point where they had to promptly modify one of them after finding they'd managed to block off a section of town in such a way that the local fire engines couldn't reach it... whoops!)... though it's noticeable that the really Large roundabouts around here tend to be built with underpasses or the like for pedestrians... or the asumption that said pedestrians will simply not cross there for one reason or another)
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  3.  @PhotonBeast  heck, google maps can be bad at Car navigation, getting confused by rear sections with long driveways, detached garriages, and all sorts of other things (anyone trying to get to my place following google's directions will find themselves looking at the wrong side of my back fence, for example, and misnumbering every property on a street happens more often than you'd think, and then there's sending you off down hilly back roads when the correct path is to backtrack slightly onto the main road because it's shorter, nevermind that you need a four wheel drive vehicle or chains or have to slow to a crawl or whatever).
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  4.  @PhotonBeast  one of the easiest ways to make a roundabout an absolute nightmare for pedestrians is actually making it Too Small for the amount of traffic going through it. There ends up being no safe time to cross without getting wiped out by cars coming OUT of the roundabout (traffic Entering the roundabout is generally safe enough, though.) When I say 'too small', I don't mean the number or size of the lanes, I mean the diameter of the circle. Mind you, a big enough roundabout is indistinguishable from a one way street/road that just happens to go in a circle.
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