[Image: roundabout constructed at the intersection of Weems Road and Easterwood Drive in 2011]

Traffic roundabouts offer the following advantages over traditional intersections:

• Safety:
  Roundabouts reduce the speed of vehicles approaching the intersection from all directions. They also ensure that vehicles approaching one another will do so at a reduced angle, rather than head-on or at right angles. Pedestrians crossing at roundabouts are also generally safer, thanks to the reduced speeds of vehicles involved.
• Efficiency:
  Studies by the insurance industry and others indicate that, on average, delays for vehicles at traffic roundabouts can be reduced by ten to as much as fifty or sixty percent vs. those at traditional intersections.
• Aesthetics:
  The raised island in the center of the roundabout can be beautified in any number of ways, including plantings and other types of landscaping, special lighting, and the installation of monuments or other forms of public art. Traditional cross-street or "T" intersection, by contrast, offer almost no opportunity for beautification.

All that said, not all intersections are good candidates for replacement by roundabouts. Where the traffic flow greatly differs among the intersecting streets, for example -- a high volume of traffic and/or speed limit on one street, and much lower on the other -- a roundabout will not likely improve the intersection by much. Intersections involving streets with many traffic signals, or among a complex pattern of signalized streets, also are unlikely to benefit from the installation of roundabouts.