Roundabout ways

In the last two decades or so, Germany has taken to roundabouts in its road infrastructure.

Wikipedia has a very impressive description of the concept, including two animations so well done that TheEditor got lost watching the tiny colored cars for a few minutes.

The safety benefits of roundabouts are well known, and these circles have been very popular in other European countries for much longer than in Germany. The British and the French, despite all the cliches in their mutual relations, both used roundabouts just about everywhere.

We can only surmise why it took Germany much longer.  Maybe there was no perceived need, maybe it was deeper. On a psychological level, a roundabout means that the authorities give up some control of the traffic flow as compared to traffic lights.

At a roundabout, motorists are in charge.

At a traffic light, even a "smart" light, the government is in charge, right?

But let's not get into the philosophy of traffic lights in all their modern versions with pedestrian on-demand lights and remote switches for fire fighters and so on.

Roundabouts are more fun.

What struck us with the Germans going around in traffic circles was this: as we started talking to the locals, stories about roundabouts that needed a makeover almost as soon as they were done began to crop up.

As it turns out, mistakes were made and had to be fixed. German road builders had to get used to designing roundabouts correctly.

In a number of mostly small towns, 18 wheelers suddenly found their path cut off because roundabouts were too tight.

If we are not mistaken in our roundabout observations, we can establish an error pattern or curve that is somewhat counter intuitive but makes sense if you think about it.

When some gadget, procedure, or change is introduced, we often see a series of problems at the beginning, and as they get fixed and improvements made, the number of problems drops and stays low until the next big change.

The roundabout problem curve appears to look more like a bell curve, with few issues at the beginning, a steady rise afterwards, followed by a drop.

How can that be?

Maybe because they put their best people on the job, did thorough evaluations and design and made sure the construction companies knew what they were doing. Once this phase was completed and roundabouts were, if you will, released for general road building, the rate of bad one rose because of less experienced people and possibly circumstances not considered in the introductory phase.

Eventually, everybody began to wise up and the number of bad projects feel.

Since today is Sunday, maybe we'll go watch some Germans go around in circles.