Nearly all transportation agencies will tell you that safety is their absolute top priority, but if you look more closely, you’ll discover that—in practice—i...
Roundabouts require drivers to concentrate on multiple incoming streams of traffic to find a gap. Their attention is already divided, and they are far more likely to miss a pedestrian than at a regular intersection.
You mainly need to be looking right (flipped for anyone who doesn’t drive on the left) pretty much all the roundabouts here that regularly have pedestrians will have triggered traffic lights or the pedestrian crossing at least a car length before the roundabout starts so if you’re entering a roundabout you’re almost always in front of where people will cross if they’re not just being dumb. Once you’re used to roundabouts they’re pretty formulaic and the biggest problem (for me anyway) on an unfamiliar roundabout is knowing which lane to be in, not the traffic already on the roundabout.
Roundabouts require drivers to concentrate on multiple incoming streams of traffic to find a gap. Their attention is already divided, and they are far more likely to miss a pedestrian than at a regular intersection.
You mainly need to be looking right (flipped for anyone who doesn’t drive on the left) pretty much all the roundabouts here that regularly have pedestrians will have triggered traffic lights or the pedestrian crossing at least a car length before the roundabout starts so if you’re entering a roundabout you’re almost always in front of where people will cross if they’re not just being dumb. Once you’re used to roundabouts they’re pretty formulaic and the biggest problem (for me anyway) on an unfamiliar roundabout is knowing which lane to be in, not the traffic already on the roundabout.