Pedestrian Olympics

Roundabouts are popping up all over North America as an alternative to intersections. Roundabouts are, of course, those circular roadways that, depending on your experience, are either  a) an efficient way of making one's way through an intersection in a relatively safe manner or b) an endless circle of chaos from which one can never escape except by an act of Congress.

This last option also describes an actual event at the Winter Olympics (minus any intervention by Congress), a subject to which we shall return later.

Roundabouts are generally perceived as a safer alternative to traditional intersections, partly because head-on collisions are virtually eliminated. This is, of course, if you are not blindly heeding the advice of our GPS, which once advised us to turn RIGHT in a roundabout.

Also, roundabouts are designed to slow cars down, again lowering the possibility of a high-speed crash.

But these advantages are admittedly car-centric. After considering much research on roundabouts, the government has concluded that if you are a pedestrian, and you head into a roundabout, you have about as good a chance of coming out alive and in one piece as a bee has of persuading a buffalo to fall in love with it.

Of course not all researchers agree with this assessment. Some say the bees have a MUCH better chance.

A Canadian guide to roundabouts has some practical advice for you pedestrians trying to improve your odds of traversing a roundabout safely. It advises you to use "assertive body language" and walk in a brisk and deliberate manner to let the cars whizzing by you know that you mean business. That you are no bee. That you -- HONK!!

Whew, that was close.

Should these measures fail -- and I cannot imagine that they wouldn't, even in a relatively polite country such as Canada -- the guide advises a more drastic step. A step IN the roadway, that is. Yes, the guide declares, if you are so daring as to actually place a foot in the path of a hurtling vehicle, drivers are bound to respect that.

And buffaloes will fall in love with bees.

Perhaps, in the absence of common sense from government leaders, we can look to the Olympics for inspiration to solve this problem. I mentioned an event that is reminiscent of the chaos that can build in a roundabout, particularly those that have more than one lane. This event is called the "short-track speedskating relay," which takes longer to type than it does to skate, and as far as I can tell goes something like this:

One member from each country/team lines up at a the start. Like Musical Chairs, there are more participants than there is space for them, ensuring that at least one team member will fall and be out of the game at some point.

The other four or so members of each team -- totaling 20 or so --  mill around in the middle of the ice, waiting until it's their turn to get tagged.

When it's their turn, they meander into the skating area, bend forward, and wait until they are pushed from behind on the bum by their teammate. Yes. On the bum.

So I'm thinking that pedestrians can use some of these techniques. They could hang out in the middle of the roundabout for a while, until they feel a bump from behind, given by a kindly car driver: "Your turn, mate!"

Or maybe they can just stick with traffic lights.