I used to live close enough to this to drive over it occasionally.<p>When it's busy traffic is literally coming at you from three directions, the geometry isn't obvious or intuitive, and none of the usual rules apply.<p>It <i>always</i> had glass from collisions on it.
Hemel Hempstead, North of London, has an even better one.<p><a href="https://goo.gl/maps/aAq7pzA45eR2" rel="nofollow">https://goo.gl/maps/aAq7pzA45eR2</a><p>It's actually 6 roundabouts forming a seventh (the Swindon one is only five forming a sixth) and it's also over a waterway.<p>As the taxi drove us through that madness, my boss turned to me and said "okay, you were right, it's best we didn't rent a car and try to drive to ourselves".
Swindon is rural England? It's the 10th biggest town in the UK, with a population that exceeds some cities. Pretty much the only reason it's not a city is the archaic rule that cities have to have a cathedral.<p><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/8705932/Britains-20-biggest-towns.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/8705932/Britai...</a>
There are several magic roundabouts - I grew up near High Wycombe which has one. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundabout#Magic_roundabout" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundabout#Magic_roundabout</a><p>The Swindon one is notable because it was the first, and because it has the tightest geometry, which makes it harder to see how it works.
"Only one <i>fatal</i> crash in five years." (mentioned in video)<p>That's hardly a good fact to support the claim that roundabouts are safer that well-regulated conventional intersections... which they are actually, and more efficient in terms of the traffic flow. But the "1 fatality in 5 years" is an useless data point that proves absolutely nothing.
My keychain fob is a tourist special - the Magic Roundabout, Swindon.<p>A few things about the Magic Roundabout:<p>If you are a rail user then you will inevitably have rail replacement bus services that will inevitably give you a free tour of the Magic Roundabout. You can get on the top deck at the front and witness the awesomeness of the roundabout precariously but with a good view.<p>By bicycle the Magic Roundabout is a bit daunting but okay due to the low traffic speed and the expectation of other road users for you to be having no idea what you are doing.<p>What is not quite ever easy to come to terms with is that you are effectively driving on the right, not the left, as far as on-coming traffic is concerned. This is not normal for UK traffic situations, you always drive on the left in the UK and expect on-coming traffic to be to the right, not left.<p>Swindon is great, for a while I used to tell people I went there for my shopping because it was the largest town without a bookshop.
Is Swindon <i>really</i> better known for its art galleries than its ludicrous roundabout? It does have a massive train museum though, if you like that sort of thing.<p>Fun fact: you can go the wrong way around the magic roundabout due to its lovecraftian geometry.
Do most people just simply ignore the outer roundabouts? Otherwise I don't know how to explain this picture: <a href="https://www.wired.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/wired_see-how-an-insane-7-circle-roundabout-actually-works-1.jpg" rel="nofollow">https://www.wired.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/wired_see-h...</a><p>There's a group of cars on the very right simply driving through the roundabout instead of around the center dot; and the two red cars on the left side of the image also couldn't have ended up where they are without ignoring the roundabout right behind them.
The history is kinda interesting<p>>Mini-roundabouts were developed by the Road Research Laboratory in the early 1970s as an experiment into whether the success of the priority-to-the-right rule at larger roundabout junctions could be applied to locations where there wasn't enough space to install a full-size roundabout. By summer 1971, 33 were in use across Britain.<p>>[Frank] Blackmore pursued this discovery, noting that the design was also superior to signalised junctions, following a Peterborough experiment where an extra 1,000 vehicles could be handled every hour by a new small roundabout at a previously signalised T-junction. He started to wonder if several small roundabouts could be linked to improve more complex junctions.<p>>...Blackmore didn't give up, [...] and in 1972 gave Britain a new design of Ring Junction. It was supposed to be in Birmingham, but the Council there was unable to fund the scheme, and so the RRL was invited to try its new design at a congested roundabout near Swindon town centre. For the first time, traffic could flow both ways right around the central island, meaning that if one side was congested, the other side could take up the slack. After a few days of Police control, in which time RRL researchers logged events from a crane-mounted camera, the experiment was branded a success.<p>>[It] is one of the few places where the jams have never really returned despite forty years of traffic growth.<p>>...They also have an excellent safety record, probably because all traffic is moving too slowly to do any real damage in the event of a collision.<p>from <a href="http://www.cbrd.co.uk/articles/the-magic-roundabout/" rel="nofollow">http://www.cbrd.co.uk/articles/the-magic-roundabout/</a><p>see also an obituary tribute <a href="http://www.mini-roundabout.com/tribute.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.mini-roundabout.com/tribute.htm</a><p>Quite a colourful history for a roundabout guy - Born and brought up an expat in Algeria, studied engineering in Switzerland, RAF pilot in WW2 getting an Air Force Cross, became an Air Attaché in Beirut where duties included bugging the Russians next door with holes drilled through the wall. Then roundabouts.
I used to live just south of Swindon and use to go across the Magic Roundabout regularly. It is <i>completely nuts</i>. My technique was just to put my foot down, go straight across and just pray - somehow I survived it. Even been across it multiple times in a Luton Van - at least cars give you a wide berth...
> It's even safer than a normal roundabout too, for one simple reason: traffic moves through it too slowly to actually cause an accident.<p>That seems like more of a negative than a positive... You can improve the safety of any intersection by designing it in a way that forces people to go slow, but we don't because we like to get places quickly.
I used to live and work in Swindon years ago, the roundabout is actually really easy to use once you get the hang of it. Best thing is there's always a route to keep moving, so it does keep traffic flowing.