Take turns, the new traffic sign we need

Ted.com has a wonderful five-minute talk by Gary Lauder proposing the Take Turns traffic sign, which I absolutely love. Lauder very sensibly outlines the benefits of traffic circles or roundabouts, but also acknowledges that they are not always possible to implement, as at a three-way intersection. I won't trouble you with a clunky description of what Gary Lauder says so well - hop over to Ted.com and take a listen.

But a final thought on traffic circles or roundabouts. They are sorely needed in North America and I've seen new ones cropping up here and there in Eastern Ontario. Ottawa doesn't stand a chance of implementing this model properly, however, until someone sorts out the ridiculous excuse for a roundabout at the Central Experimental Farm. Joining traffic takes precedence over vehicles already on the roundabout, which is a bizarre reversal of the whole concept.

Edited to note: Gary Lauder himself has pointed me to a good comparison website for traffic circles vs. roundabouts, having noticed that I made an unintentional mistake in describing Ottawa's existing roundabout above (I was short on caffeine when I wrote this earlier today). The description above is now correct.

Comments

[Gary Lauder]

I appreciate the compliments, but I must correct you on 2 points:
1) Having incoming traffic yield to traffic in the roundabout is standard for roundabouts and not doing it that way is problematic as evidenced by traffic circles...
2) Roundabouts are not the same as traffic circles. See:
http://www.alaskaroundabouts.com/mythfact1.html

-GML

[Gary Lauder]

Thanks for fixing the error. The above comment should now be ignored.
-GML