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Tech Report Contribution

 1. Introduction

This report is written in response to a request for proposed improvements to the existing design and safety of roundabouts. It evaluates the downsides of current roundabouts and allows the Land Transport Authority (LTA) of Singapore to further improve road structure to increase safety for road users. When comparing roundabouts to traditional intersections, there is a 72% decrease in accidents on roundabouts than intersections. However, there is still a high possibility of accidents occurring on roundabouts.


Background

By redesigning the roads to roundabouts, especially at high accident rate and high traffic flow areas, it is able to improve traffic flow, reduce congestion and increase safety by minimizing the number of conflict points between vehicles. In order to improve traffic flow, roundabouts are designed to have cars move constantly in a counterclockwise direction at a steady pace without traffic signals or stop signs to interrupt the flow. Additionally, to increase safety for road users, roundabouts have 8 conflict points compared to traditional intersections with 32 conflict points. Vehicles speed will also be reduced to about 20 mph as the vehicles are always turning, thus preventing fatal accidents (Bottlinger, 2022).

Accidents involving Roundabouts

Although roundabouts can reduce the number of traffic accidents overall, it does not completely prevent traffic accidents. Common reasons for accidents on roundabouts are speeding, failure to yield, stopping abruptly, and unfamiliarity with roundabouts (Caroselli, Bleachler & Coleman LLC, 2022). 

Firstly, the average speed limit at roundabouts is around 20 mph, however, when vehicles are traveling at high speed before entering a roundabout, the chances of accidents occurring will be higher as the driver might not be able to react to other vehicles that are entering or exiting the roundabout. 

Secondly, as roundabouts do not have any stop signs or traffic signals, and serve as a continuous traffic loop, drivers are responsible to judge when it is their turn to go and when they are supposed to give way to oncoming vehicles, hence having insufficient knowledge about roundabouts would increase the chances of accidents happening. 

Thirdly, stopping abruptly on a roundabout, this causes huge accidents affecting cars traveling behind the vehicles resulting in rear-end collisions and leading to multi-car crashes, thus affecting the whole traffic on a roundabout.

Lastly, roundabouts with multiple lanes pose an increasing danger compared to single-lane roundabouts, especially when drivers attempt to skip across multiple lanes to exit the roundabout. Possibly leading to collusion with vehicles in the next lane or causing the vehicle to stop abruptly which would affect the traffic flow behind the vehicle

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