Letter to the Editor | Roundabouts designed to slow traffic

Writer: Louis Roodt Stanford.

The letter of Willy Vanderhoeven, Traffic circles don’t work in Hermanus (The Village NEWS, 30 September) refers.

The remark, ‘’Most drivers treat it like a three- or four-way stop i.e. braking instead of maintaining speed, whether traffic is oncoming or not,” explains why the writer is so frustrated by the conduct of other drivers. If his expectation is that drivers approaching a circle must maintain their speed whether traffic is coming or not, he will be disappointed every time.

Traffic circles (the preferred term is roundabouts) are designed to induce slowing down and yielding to traffic on the circulatory road (in the roundabout). Even without traffic in the roundabout, drivers have to slow down to negotiate the geometry: the curved splitter island that forces a turn to the left followed by the inner circle that forces the turn to the right.

The discussion on how to use a roundabout should start with the legal requirement on right of way as contained in the National Road Traffic 1996, Act 93 of 1996.

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