Different-yet-the-same continues - Roundabout
IWhile I was on my wonderful vacation to England I got the wild idea to pick up a little notebook. I used it to jot down things that I found interesting. Turns of phrase, colloquialisms, verbal oddities.
Here is another one from the book and an explanation of why I considered this one noteworthy.
"Roundabout", "Mini roundabout"
_________________________________
"Roundabout", "Mini roundabout" - We have a good number of these in dreary ol' New England, USA. They've even been adding new ones in various places. When I was growing up people used to talk about how dangerous they were and how they were removing them in favor of traffic lights. Go figure. From my experience we tend to refer to them here as a rotary or a traffic circle although "roundabout" *is* used and recognized.
The mini roundabouts are what threw me for a loop though. I could name at least two intersections in New England that are close to, but not exactly like, the mini roundabouts I encountered in England.
What a proper British mini roundabout is, in my opinion, would be a three or fourway intersection with stolen/missing stop signs. They have thin little white arrows painted in the middle of the intersection showing you the flow that traffic should likely take in navigating the road. It was my observation that people just drove right the hell through them, straight across, at breakneck speeds.
Simple moderation policy for comments on this blog:- Contribute something
- Justify your opinion
- Be courteous to others