Accident at La Floresta sculpture

Trailrunner wrote:Agree with that, LOL, which led me to google glorieta/roundabout. Here is the definition. . .

"A modern roundabout is a circular intersection where drivers travel counterclockwise around a center island. There are no traffic signals or stop signs in a modern roundabout. Drivers yield at entry to traffic in the roundabout, then enter the intersection and exit at their desired street.

Studies by the Federal Highway Administration have found that roundabouts can increase traffic capacity by 30 percent to 50 percent compared to traditional intersections."

Thank you, Trailrunner! I am feeling much less country bumpkinee about my "misunderstanding" of what constitutes a glorieta. When I lived in Bend OR in another lifetime they began installing roundabouts at heavily traveled intersections. Once people got used to them they greatly improved traffic flow. Confused the crap out of visitors who had never encountered one though.

hahaha
Yep, modern we ain't and yep many glorietas in GDL certainly are controlled by stop lights.
Which just goes to show you. . . something, not sure what! How about, it's Mexico! Viva!

SunshineyDay wrote:Also this is not Guadalajara

No kidding ?
Yes, but it is Jalisco, and the traffic rules are state wide.

slainte39 wrote:

Lady Otter Latté wrote:

slainte39 wrote:

SunshineyDay wrote:Sorry Dave that did not change my mind about that set of lights.

Obviously, you are not familiar with all the semaforos at the major glorietas (roundabouts) in Guadalajara.

Well, if there was a glorieta at that intersection that would be a fair comparison.

Whoa!.....that is a glorieta.  
Some glorietas you are forced to go around the circle, others like this one has a straight through passing but the glorieta rules still apply for turns, as it does on this one on the Carretera and Paseo del Lago in Ajijic.
All up and down Lopez Mateos in GDL there are these same situations (roundabout and/or straight through), such as L. M. and  Av. Guadalupe, L. M. and Mariano Otero to name a few and many, many others, all controlled by traffic lights.  Not uncommon.

For all you folks that don't read every post about what constitutes a glorieta, IN  MEXICO.
The glorietas with straight through passing across the diameter are only for the traffic going straight through.  All turns have to be done glorieta style.
The first/main intersection/roundabout coming out of the Dublin airport in Ireland onto a 6 lane motorway recently installed traffic lights, so I guess they are going backwards.

Just venting: I really hate glorietas. Terrifying in some places.

The situation in La Floresta works pretty well.

Let's ask the guy who rear-ended the truck on his moto there the other day and went through the back window of the truck, or the ORMA moto victim I stopped a few months ago to attend to, or my neighbor who got rear-ended there last year, or the victims of the fender-bender there this morning if they think it works well . . . These drivers were all Mexican, btw, and should be well-versed in "glorietas". . .

Not dissing you, Gringal, just sayin'.

slainte39 wrote:

slainte39 wrote:

Lady Otter Latté wrote:

slainte39 wrote:

SunshineyDay wrote:Sorry Dave that did not change my mind about that set of lights.

Obviously, you are not familiar with all the semaforos at the major glorietas (roundabouts) in Guadalajara.

Well, if there was a glorieta at that intersection that would be a fair comparison.

Whoa!.....that is a glorieta.  
Some glorietas you are forced to go around the circle, others like this one has a straight through passing but the glorieta rules still apply for turns, as it does on this one on the Carretera and Paseo del Lago in Ajijic.
All up and down Lopez Mateos in GDL there are these same situations (roundabout and/or straight through), such as L. M. and  Av. Guadalupe, L. M. and Mariano Otero to name a few and many, many others, all controlled by traffic lights.  Not uncommon.

For all you folks that don't read every post about what constitutes a glorieta, IN  MEXICO.
The glorietas with straight through passing across the diameter are only for the traffic going straight through.  All turns have to be done glorieta style.
The first/main intersection/roundabout coming out of the Dublin airport in Ireland onto a 6 lane motorway recently installed traffic lights, so I guess they are going backwards.

Many of the large Glorietas in Guad have traffic lights, which seems to defeat the purpose of maintaining smooth constant speed.

The reason being is that the traffic in the circle has the right away and when traffic is very heavy some of the feeder streets (sometimes 6 or more) would have a hard time entering without the lights giving everyone a turn.
The Minerva glorieta would be a perfect example. Besides that, there is a lot of jockeying for position, left and right, in the circle that is somewhat curtailed by having traffic lights.

slainte39 wrote:The reason being is that the traffic in the circle has the right away and when traffic is very heavy some of the feeder streets (sometimes 6 or more) would have a hard time entering without the lights giving everyone a turn.
The Minerva glorieta would be a perfect example. Besides that, there is a lot of jockeying for position, left and right, in the circle that is somewhat curtailed by having traffic lights.

Sounds delightful.

It's close to a demolition derby at 6:00PM on a Friday....slightly more skillful.
Even with lights, gridlock is inevitable.  Not being able to move makes it hard to jockey

Trailrunner wrote:Agree with that, LOL, which led me to google glorieta/roundabout. Here is the definition. . .

"A modern roundabout is a circular intersection where drivers travel counterclockwise around a center island. There are no traffic signals or stop signs in a modern roundabout. Drivers yield at entry to traffic in the roundabout, then enter the intersection and exit at their desired street.

Studies by the Federal Highway Administration have found that roundabouts can increase traffic capacity by 30 percent to 50 percent compared to traditional intersections."

I agree with the statement that traffic entering the roundabout must yield to traffic already on the roundabout. But, nothing is cast in stone. There is a roundabout in Cornwall Ontario at the junction with the bridge from the USA where traffic on the roundabout is instructed to yield to traffic entering the roundabout. HMmmmmmmmmm. A City counselor was not amused when I pointed out that their instructions did not comply with International use. I got the sort of "duh" expression. Roundabouts are rare in Ontario

On the other hand we have the definition of roundabout from Wictionary:

- a road junction at which traffic streams circularly around a central island
- a children's play apparatus which rotates around a central axis when pushed
- a fairground carousel
- a detour

One can add to that "talking in a "roundabout manner"". I am sure there are other uses.

So, what is a glorieta?

Wordnik describes a glorieta in San Miguel as "This glorieta is a circle, of course, but in addition, it is bisected by two major streets that cross each other in an “X” inside the circle." Bet there is confusion there!

And then, of course, there are the roundabouts with a light controlled pedestrian crossing over the middle. Where do they fit in?

There are three glorietas in La Floresta and only one is controlled by lights. They are all clearly marked as such and the vialidad will issue tickets if they are ignored.

In France the intersections are being replaced by roundabout, they are more efficient and do not slow down traffic like lights do.. The intersection in la Floresta coul be a roundabout but it is not. The traffic is not flowing through it, it has light, Look at the pictures of the Arc of Triumph in Paris , it is a roundabout, it has 9 or 12 large avenues intersecting no light..of course you have to have drivers who are not scared of merging and understand priority to the right and the no rearending rule...

The light in the glorietas here are counterproductive, the roundabout where invented so the lights would not interfere and the traffic would flow.. The glorieta if you want to call it that in La Floresta is nothing but a poorly designed intersection..

Exactly! You can call it whatever you want but due to the frequency of accidents in that area I would call it simply a dangerous intersection. Also, there is very little traffic coming from the right or left so the need for a roundabout to hasten traffic there is useless.
Just a bad intersection, beware when traveling through it.

yes speed is a problem, they could make a real roundabout there and the people from La Floresta would have no problem entering the carretera. In a real roundabout people coming from the right have the right away so people exiting La Floresta would have priority so it would require some serious tope before the roundabout to slow down the 50 or 100 km/h drivers...

CanuckBob wrote:A mitigating factor is speed. That area is 40kmh. Most are doing 60kmh to 100 kmh.

Agree, speed and not paying attention, and maybe the lights being out at least 50% of the time, is a big part of the problem with this intersection.

What is scarier to me are the people who fly, and I mean FLY, past me on the right in that lane that is for . . .whatever it's for. There used to be a girl selling dulces at a little table with an umbrella in that lane and I've wondered when she was going to be taken out by some big SUV.

In Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island in Canada, roundabouts are very common.  Here's a webcam of one in Halifax that has five major streets feeding in and out of it.  During rush hours, it can get very congested, but still moves efficiently.  It just takes practice to learn the correct way of merging.

https://www.novascotiawebcams.com/en/webcams/armdale-rotary/

(this is a live webcam, and it may take a few seconds to load)