I take another route, now, rather than use it.

Maybe that's the whole "how it will keep me from dying" thing.

But the grade crossing with a control light in this community WILL result in fatalities.

That "no opportunity to mess up" thing? HAH! Here, people will bull on through completely ignoring the signal light, because there wasn't one there before and there shouldn't be one there now. It'll happen. Especially given our local rate of impaired driving.

apprehensively,
Bright

Points of collision are reduced from 32 to 14, and raised medians and full concrete barriers make it physically difficult if not impossible to go in directions you aren't supposed to. You have to be completely drunk or otherwise a *terrible* driver not to be able to handle a DDI. Most drivers their first unfamiliar time will be hesitant, but once they know how it works and those around them work with it, everyone benefits. But yes, drunks are drunks are drunks. That's not going to change. Only their opportunities will be lessened.

They sort of keep things moving along. Though I have seen accidents at the simplest circle around because people are supposed to yield and don't always.

Triangles? I thought the video high on rosy scenario and short on explanations, or maybe they were just too quick for me.

You can drive many miles without ever having to stop and it's very safe. France also has circles but with different rules.

When idiots fail to pay attention and yield to traffic already in the roundabout, it's the low speeds that mitigate accidents and damages. Lack of traffic signals means little to no stopping which benefits everyone, but it requires people pay attention, go at a speed appropriate to conditions, and yielding to other drivers who have the right-of-way.

Sounds like it would work. I know of quite a few interchanges around here that could use that, but I suspect it eats up too much space for many of them to be retrofitted.

The benefits greatly outweighed the cost. I suspect the extra real estate was mostly because local traffic planners were also widening the road as well to accommodate next few decades of growth.

Also a cloverleaf would take up a lot less space than this thing.

Cloverleafs have a significantly larger footprint, and they're for highway-highway interchanges. DDIs are for highway-street changes, as explicitly stated in the video, where traffic has to transition from high-low or low-high speed.

It just looks like a way to replace an intersection with lights to one without. A quick Google looks like the footprints are similar. We have many cloverleafs in our area and I've never seen an accident on one. Watch. Tomorrow I'll see one. Anyway I'll watch the video again.

The main statistic that stood out to me was that it significantly lowered fatal accidents. If there are fewer accidents and deaths, then that is really all that should matter.

The example with the semi merging wasn't very good. He could have merged on a cloverleaf with no lights just as easily. I do it all the time sharing the road with semis. But, statistics don't lie. Maybe people are so confused they slow down and aren't reckless.

See here: http://www.dispatch.com/article/20130528/news/305289763


Stack interchange as seen at the end of the video is the most efficient. Most cloverleaf interchanges were built a while back before they started doing stack interchanges. The problem with cloverliefs is the narrow curve which causes you to have to drop your speed and then excel quickly again to merge. They are very dangerous.

If you really want to get into the weeds, here is an academic paper discussing it:

http://fau.digital.flvc.org/islandora/object/fau%3A3779/datastream/OBJ/download/Comparative_analysis_between_the_diverging_diamond_interchange_and_partial_cloverleaf_interchange_using_microsimulation_modeling.pdf

That said, it is not a magic bullet for all situations. But in the right use cases, it can be a significant improvement over cloverleafs, partial cloverleafs and other common designs.

It's often referred to as a Double Diamond Interchange around here.

I enjoy it quite a bit, and it seems to have improved congestion and traffic accidents at the intersection it replaced. It's second nature to most folks now. The first time you drive through such an intersection is disorienting, but there are signs and clear markings. It's just not that hard.

Not good if your only passing through and may never see on again. That may account for the accidents that do occur.

Unless you are utterly incapable of following lane markings, refuse to pay attention to traffic lights, or are constantly barreling right into raised medians and concrete dividers, you have zero excuse for not being able to navigate through one of these. These are designed as bad-driver-proof as possible, hence dropping potential collision points from 32 to 14 and making it blaringly obvious where you need to go and how to get there.