I think round-abouts work better in Europe is that the incoming traffic has the right-of-way. The cars already in have a better view out the front and yield to keep the incoming cars from stopping. Here it's the other way around so cars have to stop and are forced to look at an angle to see the traffic.
Road planing engineers once told me that the most dangerous intersection is one where the driver has to look across the A piller.
If you tried that where I live, you'd go over a very high curb, onto a grassy medium with large cement flower containers and urban improvement stuff like that, and off the curb on the other side. I'd pay to watch it, but if I were a betting man, I'd bet the spread--I'd take the cement containers for a 100 bucks and give you the points.
They started putting roundabouts in our area a few years ago--to replace stop lights, not stop signs. They're cheaper, and they cause more accidents at those type of intersections, but they're low-speed side collisions with low to no injury rates versus the crazy stuff that happens at intersections. I've gotten used to them, but at busy intersections, I have to admit I'd rather have a stop light. I think they're great for low volume areas though.
No, that's a complete disaster, as the two vids above show. Making it easy to get into the roundabout, but blocking the exits (where entering drivers have right of way) means the roundabout just freezes up regularly.
In really heavy traffic, roundabouts stop being such a great idea - as someone above noted, the dominant stream of traffic just takes over. Here in Britain, it's becoming common to see large roundabouts fitted with stop lights in the roundabout that work at peak times and switch off the rest of the time.
We often have a grassy hump in the middle of big roundabouts and the kerb depth seems chosen so that if anyone runs straight on, their front suspension is ripped off on the first kerb and the car will then (literally) plough its way to a halt in the grass. Great to watch, as long as it's happening to someone else.....
