So a roundabout for Americans?
this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2026
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This would gridlock so fast. Actually I think it would gridlock so incredibly hard that cars would end up abandoned after they ran out of gas from how long they were stuck.
Uh-huh.
I assume the 'engineer' has never seen a road or drove a car, because even if we assume more infrastructure will solve induced demand, and even if everyone's going at a nice 30mph, this intersection is gonna go at like 3 accidents/minute.
I used to commute an hour to work every day, each way, and the worst part was cross-merging traffic, exactly like there are 4 of in this design.
Those 180° turns look way too tight for semi-trailer trucks. Even the vans are drifting there.
And all those single lanes, merging, and tight turns are a recipe for congestion.
A proper roundabout would work much better, waste less concrete, and probably take up less space.
This was obviously designed with the assumption that people know how to drive without getting in one another's way.
Not even 10am yet and enough of car brain for the day 🤦♂️.
And yes I get it, some countries consider roundabouts (the ones used almost everywhere in the world) some black magic.
This looks like hell...
It's only one lane of traffic either way and you've got to merge in and out of two separate traffic flows in a short distance just to go 'straight' through to the other side.
That's just a big roundabout
This is just a flattened highway interchange.
Also, holy shit so many combination enter/exit lanes, so many potential points of high-velocity conflict!
Exacrly my thought, those already exist and work wonderfully, why try to make them flat and 100 times more dangerous in the process?
What do these folks have against roundabouts?
This is a roundabout. It's just three roundabouts that only connect two roads each.
Well this is a very roundabout way of getting places
@destructdisc LOL, this is like a very fucked up roundabout. It takes way more space and is way more dangerous.
dude bro, we need to drive at 90 MILES PER HOUR AT ALL TIMES!
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This design is an abomination really, there'd be so many accidents around the merging, where the traffic streams effectively have to swap over.
Because, you know, cars and car infrastructure don't already take up massive amounts of space as is.
The only defence of this is that it would take LESS space than some kind of cloverleaf system. I think this whole design is trying to be space efficient whilst attemptign to keep traffic flowing (which it wouldn't do).
Making it so most of the traffic is in a merging state is a really bad idea. So many accidents happen because of people changing lanes, and here a large part of the traffic needs to do that, plus has little space and time to do it in. I'd love to see this made in something like City Skylines, just to show how bad it gets (without the car accidents, though, unless newest versions also simulate that).
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A very elaborate roundabout for sure
It’s wonderful yes but relies on people leaving space to allow zippering.
Unfortunately everyone is a bastard and goes bumper to bumper.
Bloody hell. So much merging and switching of lanes. There would broken bits of car everywhere. The only upside would be the ability of bikes to go past the gridlock that would happen at a certain density of traffic. Also, why do so many people in the animation need to U-turn?
They need a U turn because they missed their exit at the previous insanely designed interchange
Came to say the same thing. So many lane changes needed in a short distance. People suck at merging at the best of times. This is a panel beater's wet dream. That 'engineer' needs to go back to school.
This is why engineers need to go outside and experience the real world like the rest of us.
I've spent a fair proportion of my life around civil, structural, mechanical and process engineers, and found them to be some of the most pragmatic, sensible, intelligent and practical people you'll even meet. The shit they design needs to work, or people die. Whoever designed this is not one of those people.
I've spent a fair portion of my professional career working for engineers of various types. The issue lies with the people who assume their intense knowledge of their chosen field of study means that they are experts in all fields of human existence. This pomposity leads to the stereotypical engineer who gets trapped into CAD models that don't translate to the real world and get belligerent when that gets pointed out. Certainly I've met engineers who aren't like that, but the stereotype exists for a reason. Perhaps it's Electrical engineers that are the worst? I meet a lot of them.
Retired school teachers are another problematic customer who knows more than any seasoned journeyman.
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Because they're on a stroad and the business they want to visit is on the other side
The people uturning are just trying to go straight lol. They have to turn right, merge left, u turn, merge right, and turn right, in order to go straight. Others are trying to turn left which here involves a u turn, merge right, turn right.
This only works if drivers take the u-turns at full speed. The first driver slows down to 10 km/h for the u-turn, and the whole thing gets backed up to the point merging is impossible, and it becomes worse than a 4-way light.
Because fuck pedestrians, right?
Seen from a traffic planning perspective, these lane changes alone would cause more incidents than 10% of drivers running a red light crossing.
This is not traffic free. This does not account for the vast majority of people who don't know how to drive or merge on a highway. This would fail every real world trial. It can be said there is some beauty in its arrogance though.
Edit: this is clearly (hopefully) satire given those U turns of death in the middle of a highway interchange that cannot be used by the one thing that needs it the most for this to be commercially viable: semi trucks.
Edit 2: I just noticed this isn't an interstate highway intersection but just your regular ol state road intersection. I ate the onion... I hope it was satire at least.
It says traffic light-free.
This is just a roundabout with a way for drivers to bail out and turn around before entering the roundabout
It's also a roundabout with two 90 degree turns and a 180.
This looks like something RealCivilEngineer would do for a bit, lol. I think I see a bit of the strongest shape in there.
Thoughtful of them to provide extra U turns so that people approaching this monstrosity can nope the fuck out.
Why not just elevate one of the roads and have an exit/entrance for anyone who wants to switch? Having to turn right, merge, fucking u-turn, then immediately merge again just to GO STRAIGHT is the stupidest fucking thing.
I'm 90% sure this is just Detroit.
looks to be firmly 'in theory'
It almost exists as the Michigan left
The gif is kinda soothing to watch if you don't know the context behind it. Then I read the post title and now the gif is nauseating to look at.
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