https://www.startribune.com/are-roundabouts-really-safer-than-traditional-intersections/561251111/

With only about 5,000 roundabouts on the nation’s roads — making them still somewhat uncommon — it’s natural that drivers might consider them confusing. But Jim Brainard, the mayor of Carmel, Ind., is a big proponent of them. He spent time studying law in the United Kingdom and marveled at how efficiently traffic flowed through them. In 1996, he brushed off ridicule and brought the first roundabout to Carmel. Now with 126 of them, the city just north of Indianapolis is virtually traffic light free and unofficially known as the “Roundabout Capital of America.”

“I’m responsible,” he proudly says, touting the results that have come with them. Property-damage crashes at Carmel’s roundabouts are down 40%, and crashes with injuries have dropped by 75%. Insurance rates have dropped, and drivers have saved gas with less stopping and idling at traffic signals.

Results in Carmel mirror what has occurred nationally where the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety have found a 37% decrease in total crashes and a 75% drop in crashes resulting in injuries when compared with traditional signalized intersections. Fatal mishaps dropped by 90%. Wrecks involving pedestrians declined 40%, the data found.

More than 10,000 motorists died at intersections in 2018, according to the FHWA, and fatalities often resulted from head-on, right-angle or T-bone crashes in which another driver ran a red light or was making a turn. Roundabouts have a favorable safety record because motorists are generally moving in the same direction and traveling at slower speeds, said Joe Gustafson, a traffic engineer with Washington County Public Works Traffic Operations.

It’s not that crashes don’t happen, but they are more likely to be low-energy sideswipes or rear-enders that tend to bring less serious consequences, he said.

“You are generally cleaning up glass and not blood,” he said.