“It has been dubbed Britain’s ‘most woke’ roundabout because drivers must give priority to pedestrians, then cyclists, and then other cars and lorries before continuing on themselves. Locals have pointed out the priority for cyclists and pedestrians is unnecessary as only cars and lorries regularly use the Boundary Way route.”
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2m for some asphalt. Landscaping and paint ?? That’s very expensive.
I don’t know if it’s what happened here but I have noticed that sometimes people use highly speculative math for things like this. Like the actual cost of landscaping and paint was 100k, but if you assume that everyone who would use this had to divert to another route that took 10m, and they all average £15 an hour, and 10,000 people per hour could have used this, then there’s £9,000 lost per hour of construction.
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exactly, normality is too woke, reality needs to be deranged to their worldviews
So in other words, a roundabout. At least in the Netherlands, it has nothing to do with this weird woke idea
Exactly. Looks like a regular Polish roundabout to me.
Thaddeus is scared of roundabouts.
If bike and pedestrian traffic is infrequent you’ll rarely have to give priority, problem solved right?
But then, how will they keep their bumper hunter streak?
/s
Drivers in Britain should give way to pedestrians at all junctions, including entrances and exits to all roundabouts. It’s literally in the highway code.
Admittedly it’s only a “should” rather than a “must” for most roundabouts, but still. This is the what driving standards are these days, and it is a good thing. It’s all about protecting the more vulnerable. Car drivers are more dangerous to others than pedestrians are, so car drivers have to take more care and should give priority to the more vulnerable pedestrians.
EDIT: But once again I’ve fallen victim to a classic blunder. The sort of people who would say a roundabout is woke would never care about a well-reasoned argument. And I’m just preaching to the choir in this community anyway!
EDIT: But once again I’ve fallen victim to a classic blunder. The sort of people who would say a roundabout is woke would never care about a well-reasoned argument. And I’m just preaching to the choir in this community anyway!
I’d question the existence of “the sort of people” in any meaningful quantity. As far as I can tell the only people dubbing it the ‘most woke’ roundabout are the authors of the article. Not a single person quoted uses the word woke. It’s a classic rage bait headline to generate clicks.
https://www.mylondon.news/news/transport/britains-most-woke-2m-roundabout-31744635
Here in Malaysia I always thought it was our third world mentality that caused drivers to speed up when approaching a pedestrian crossing, when in reality it was a leftover notion from our times as a former British colony.
A lot of so called ‘third world mentality’ is just Victorian cultural norms that were imposed by the global techno fascists of the time (the British Empire).
Facile and lazy. In reality, the norms and practices in “third world” countries are pretty comparable no matter who, if anyone, colonized them. It’s just a question of development. Not everything in the world is the responsibility of big bad white man.
Yes all third world countries are the same /s. Not at all a reductive viewpoint.
Techno fascists have set our world on an unsustainable path and it is past Colonial powers that started that. So, revisionism aside, those “big bad” technology and industry obsessed empires will be attributed most of the blame and they better fix it or we won’t be here much longer.
That, or China will have to fix it since Western countries have been thumb twiddling for decades (despite being the source of the problem). Either way it will be ugly once past colonial powers lose their shine and history books reflect an honest assessment of them. “Great” Britain is already a shadow of its former self. More will follow that march into relative obscurity as the rest of the world fixes the mess they created.
The cultural, economic and environmental impact of the Colonial era is much more profound than most know (largely because its ignored in most Western curriculums). You may not recognize issues if you’re white or man, but that can be remedied by going outside and speaking to people that don’t look or talk like you.
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Chill, bro
If anyone’s “fucking” taking things personally here, then it’s not me.
The argument I was responding to is an obviously ahistorical attempt to blame almost literally everything on “Victorians”. That’s dumb for exactly the reasons you just outlined.
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About “fucked” this and “fucked up” that, personally I just see it as laziness and weak language skills. Always reaching for the bazooka because hunting for the scalpel is too hard. But it’s probably a bit generational too.
On empire, it’s the story of humanity. Every nation in the world has been either the author or the subject of imperialism, and it’s usually nonstop back-and-forth. Sure, the European empires were the first to cross seas, but why should that change anything fundamentally?
Personally I find it interesting to observe the relative fates of those countries that choose to dwell on their imperial victim status, and those that don’t. Look at the different outcomes of Algeria and South Korea, for example.
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Can confirm (Source: Played Victoria 3)
Weren’t they just regular fascists? I thought “techno fascists” referred to people like Elon and Zuckerberg?
Yes, youre right in a strict sense but the whole advance tech at any cost including mass casualty (as long as its disproportionately nonwhite people) was a colonial era development leading up to the industrial revolution. The idea of outsourcing labor to lesser humans (on a global scale) also comes from that time. Those are the precursors that have led to the Elons and Zuckerbergs of today.
Goes to North Pole.
Tries to go more North.
Is gimbal lockedThey trialed these particular roundabouts a few years ago elsewhere after spending literal years building it in the middle of a junction. Nobody likes them, they require even more crossing and attention, as a pedestrian and you feel rushed to move.
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Hoping not getting crushed by SUVs while drivers are busy scrolling down their phone is so woke. /s
My issue with this roundabout is that it’s the worst of all worlds. It’s unusual, and complex for cars. Given how bad the average driver is, I wouldn’t want to be a cyclist or pedestrian dealing with this.
While it has its problems, Milton Keynes does non-car traffic quite well. It has “red ways” that cut under or over the main trunk roads. It’s possible to reach most of the city without having to cross a major road.
While retrofitting this is harder, surely they could come up with something better, for that sort of money.
Oh and as for the woke comments. I’ve found describing it/replacing it with empathy/empathetic works well. It seems to really annoy the gammon crowd, while turning those on the fence away from it, hard.
Just copy Dutch roundabout design, they work great for both car drivers as well as other road users. Not complicated at all when copied properly.
We have plenty of variants of roundabouts here too. Many would work far better. They just seem to have combined 3 good elements in a way that they all disrupt each other in practice.
Cars need to watch for cyclists doing an unusual manoeuvre., as well as other cars reacting abruptly and unpredictability.
Cyclists can’t trust their right of way due to idiot drivers.
Pedestrians will get lost behind the clutter of the cycle path and are at risk of being run down.
I might be daft, but how exactly is this complex? Or rather, how is more complex than any other situation where you have to give way? These kind of roundabouts is all you have over here. Never seemed difficult to grasp imho.
It’s the context switching. The cycle lane forms an effective roundabout around the roundabout. Drivers are keyed to looking for cars and cyclists on the road. The outer rim will push the cyclists out of their awareness. In effect, the bike will “appear” suddenly and at speed. Most drivers will still be fine, but a few will cause potential chaos.
Basically, it doesn’t follow the normal “flow” of most roundabouts. A few bad drivers will make everyone else’s life difficult.
More than one “lane” you could turn into or out to. People are idiots, so you gotta remember how had things could get.
I lived in a place with a basic circle put in to “smooth” traffic on a small-but-main avenue, and they had a town hall meeting, YouTube tutorial, and a hands-on workshop on how to navigate a regular circle. People still came to the thing, put a left signal on, and pulled straight into oncoming traffic because they wanted to go that way. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
This looks like a perfectly ordinary round about to me, except for them driving on the left. It doesn’t have multiple car lanes.
The round abouts with multiple car lanes are indeed confusing to some people, and the ones I’ve seen all have the bicycle lanes offset to make crossings further from the center or dug out under the road.
Oh, not multiple car lanes, no. Just the pedestrian/bike throughway, I guarantee, will have a nonzero amount of drivers on it. Hence why I put lanes in quotes.
Any project involving the general public that requires an explanation is doomed from the outset. Explanations just don’t scale well.
There’s a town near me that put in a couple of roundabouts. There’s an old lady known to the entire area who will simply treat the roundabout like a standard 4 way stop that has a cone in the middle and just go whatever way she is going, so turn left to turn left, etc.
Ok ok, so you’re saying that basically any roundabout is too difficult. Then it’s a case of driver certification and not roundabouts. We really should stop seeing having a driver license as a right, rather than a privilege. Of course that will never happen.
The problem with not seeing driving as a right is without public transport you will alienate a huge portion of the most vulnerable people.
You need to solve other issues before you can start taking away licenses unfortunately
I rather have people be alienated then them crashing into other people. If not having a car is such a huge problem, drive better or move somewhere where you are not so reliant on a car.
… priority for cyclists and pedestrians is unnecessary as only cars and lorries regularly use the Boundary Way route.
forgive me if I’m being a little too above-roomtemp-IQ for this, but what’s the problem then?
“it might give me a slight inconvenience so it is evil”
The new infrastructure might make the route safer and more pedestrain or cyclists may start using the route, which could delay drivers by entire seconds. A clear and deliberate attack on the drivers freedom of mobility and rights to exclussively have all infrastructure catered to them.
Sickos: Yes, ha ha ha YES.
c/nottheonion
This is the law even in (much of) the carbrained United States. Pedestrians always have the right-of-way, even if they aren’t in a signed or painted crosswalk.
Yes. Even in places where they could get a ticket for jaywalking, cars are supposed to yield and let them mosey/stagger/traipse etc.
This fact will not actually stop a moving vehicle, however. Neither will the painted lines of a crosswalk. So make use of your larger visual field and look out for distracted drivers, e.g. all of them.
Oh yeah, but what I’m saying is I don’t get why this would be “woke” since it’s the most basic of motor vehicle laws in even the least pedestrian-friendly places.
Oh anything that’s not completely selfish for the people who already have all the privileges qualifies as “woke” to them.
I agree it’s just basic common sense and humanity.
But then I felt compelled to point out you can’t rely on it for safety, because pedestrian deaths are high and on the rise.
