American here, I have no problem with them. There was a roundabout nearby in my city. When they unleashed it, the first driver brave enough to traverse it swerved off the road and died on the spot. It caused such a scene that the next 3 cars watching entered the wrong way and started to pile up. More cars piled up over the coming weeks, it couldn’t be taped off because the city service workers were unfortunately not Europeans and also could not traverse the labyrinth, they too piled up and died of starvation. Eventually it collapsed into a singularity under its growing weight (Americans are fat, so it was over the Chandrasekhar limit), cars add into the eternal swirl each day and emanate slowly as Hawking radiation. It’s quite beautiful to see.
I think using your left signal if you’re leaving on the third exit of a four exit roundabout is actually standard practice in some countries. I saw people do this a lot in Norway for instance.
I’m a grownup who got a driving license late, but even after the practice and test I didn’t know the answer to how to signal out of a roundabout. So I looked it up.
In my home state, the law is: never use your left signal at a roundabout (unless switching to a left lane within a roundabout). So I assumed it was universal. Maybe not.
That’s probably how it should be. Otherwise the only way the left signal is useful is if you see it right when the car enters. Otherwise you’ll have no idea what exit it’s meant to be for.
Unfortunately, it’s a thing. I’ve had people try to merge onto the roundabout when I’m in it, and then honk at me when I didn’t let them through. If any of these people ever do hit my car, I am not going to try to correct them ahead of time so that they perjurer themselves to the cop who eventually shows up to take the report.
Which I think speaks to the terrible level of driver training in America. A roundabout is a combination of things that you should already know about as a driver, like how yield signs work, and how to stay in your lane and follow lines on the road. If you can’t put those thoughts together, then I question your ability to drive safely at all.
I don’t think it’s a matter of ‘can’t figure it out’ as much as ‘don’t like change’. We’ve been putting roundabouts in my shithole state and the number of people who complain about them boggles the mind. They will successfully navigate them, but they’ll whinge about it the whole time.
This happened to me just the other day as I was chauffeuring some good old boy around. Mind you he wasn’t even driving, but still had to let it be known that he disapproved. There was no traffic so I barely had to slow down to navigate the intersection and his input was “I hate these things, they just slow you down!”. I tried pointing out that if it had been a 4-way stop we would have had to stop, so it was actually faster this way. I don’t know if he was immune to logic or just unwilling to admit that something that was different than what he was used to had a benefit, but he just repeated that he hated them, so I dropped the subject.
Yeah, he was a cracker. Here’s the thing though, in other ways he seems like a perfectly normal and decent human being.
We passed by an Amish produce stand and he had me stop. He got a bunch of fresh Veggies and then we stopped at a Chinese restaurant where he went inside and gave the lady working there a bunch of them. As we were leaving he even had a short conversation with her in Chinese. I’m sure it was very simple things like “Have a good one” and “Goodbye” or something similar, but I thought it was cool he had learned it. That kind of thing is pretty rare around here.
In the car he was telling me how they had recently lost one of their children in a car accident. It was heartbreaking. Sounds like he has known them for quite while.
He then had me drive to a neighboring college town that has people from all over the world come to go to school, so it’s a fairly diverse place. He was telling me he liked it there because there were so many different kinds of interesting people. We stopped by his Dry Cleaners which was also ran by Chinese people and he left them with the other half of the vegetables.
Then on the way out of town he had me stop at the International Market. He asked me if I had ever tried Eel before and when I said I hadn’t he bought me a couple of cans (it’s ok, nothing to write home about imo).
So yeah, he was an old white redneck, but he wasn’t a total piece of shit and fairly open minded about some things. I’m not sure why he hates roundabouts, but that attitude is super common around here, among all sorts of people.
Our core value is taking necessary services and pricing them like a luxury.
Spread everything out really far, get rid of public transit, and, since everybody still needs a license to drive your expensive cars, make the driving test super easy to pass so almost everybody can drive. Boom, 1.2 passengers per car and nobody can actually drive them well.
I reeeeal American I just don’t want my tax dollars going to fund other people’s firefighting costs. Can we privatize that??
Also a right to bear arms and own weapons is sacrosanct and very important to my people. Why can’t our people please finally be allowed go have nuclear weapons. Their kids need some too. Very important.
Our core value isn’t Car, it’s “individual freedom, especially at the cost or inconvenience of others”. It just so happens that Car aligns pretty well with that
So interesting to me that Americans think being dependent on a car is “freedom”. Individual freedom should be the freedom to get to where you need to go with viable options to walk, bike, train, bus, tram, or drive.
To be fair the mindset that a car means freedom is also quite common in Germany too. Especially in the countryside (tbf its often required if you dont want waste a lot of time due to shitty public transportation)
We rarely have other viable options. Long before most of us were born, the U.S. built an infrastructure centered around cars, sidelining other forms of transportation.
In America, owning a car is often the key to freedom of movement. So it’s no surprise people equate cars with freedom. Getting people to see how car dependency actually limits our freedom is like trying to wake someone from the Matrix.
No one can make a profit on people walking, so I dont understand how your point makes any sense.
edit: oh wait! footware and sports drink companies. OK, well, you’ve made some compelling points here. And we use small handed children to in America to make these shoes and sports drinks, right?
Yeah, you can’t drive like a dangerous asshole on your way to park your full size truck based SUV across two handicap spots if you don’t have a car in the first place!
American here, I have no problem with them. There was a roundabout nearby in my city. When they unleashed it, the first driver brave enough to traverse it swerved off the road and died on the spot. It caused such a scene that the next 3 cars watching entered the wrong way and started to pile up. More cars piled up over the coming weeks, it couldn’t be taped off because the city service workers were unfortunately not Europeans and also could not traverse the labyrinth, they too piled up and died of starvation. Eventually it collapsed into a singularity under its growing weight (Americans are fat, so it was over the Chandrasekhar limit), cars add into the eternal swirl each day and emanate slowly as Hawking radiation. It’s quite beautiful to see.
I’ve taken a trip to see this infamous roundabout - it’s quite pretty at night!
Interestingly they spin counterclockwise here, but clockwise in Australia.
How can one be too stupid to use a roundabout?
I’ve seen
Turning left without going around the center
Stopping to allow someone into the roundabout intended as a kind gesture and
My mom insisted that in her car I use the left turn signal if my roundabout exit is to the left of my entrance
Yeah your mom is right. An entrance signal is useful on smaller roundabouts, but is always less important than the exit right signal
As a European it’s very cute listening to you guys working out how to signal on a roundabout.
But to give some help… Signal as if you’re going to continue round until you pass the exit before the one you need at which point signal for the exit.
I think using your left signal if you’re leaving on the third exit of a four exit roundabout is actually standard practice in some countries. I saw people do this a lot in Norway for instance.
Oh? This is actually great news.
I’m a grownup who got a driving license late, but even after the practice and test I didn’t know the answer to how to signal out of a roundabout. So I looked it up.
In my home state, the law is: never use your left signal at a roundabout (unless switching to a left lane within a roundabout). So I assumed it was universal. Maybe not.
That’s probably how it should be. Otherwise the only way the left signal is useful is if you see it right when the car enters. Otherwise you’ll have no idea what exit it’s meant to be for.
Unfortunately, it’s a thing. I’ve had people try to merge onto the roundabout when I’m in it, and then honk at me when I didn’t let them through. If any of these people ever do hit my car, I am not going to try to correct them ahead of time so that they perjurer themselves to the cop who eventually shows up to take the report.
Which I think speaks to the terrible level of driver training in America. A roundabout is a combination of things that you should already know about as a driver, like how yield signs work, and how to stay in your lane and follow lines on the road. If you can’t put those thoughts together, then I question your ability to drive safely at all.
I don’t think it’s a matter of ‘can’t figure it out’ as much as ‘don’t like change’. We’ve been putting roundabouts in my shithole state and the number of people who complain about them boggles the mind. They will successfully navigate them, but they’ll whinge about it the whole time.
This happened to me just the other day as I was chauffeuring some good old boy around. Mind you he wasn’t even driving, but still had to let it be known that he disapproved. There was no traffic so I barely had to slow down to navigate the intersection and his input was “I hate these things, they just slow you down!”. I tried pointing out that if it had been a 4-way stop we would have had to stop, so it was actually faster this way. I don’t know if he was immune to logic or just unwilling to admit that something that was different than what he was used to had a benefit, but he just repeated that he hated them, so I dropped the subject.
You said they were a (presumably white) old American dude, so I would wager that it’s all of the above.
Yeah, he was a cracker. Here’s the thing though, in other ways he seems like a perfectly normal and decent human being.
We passed by an Amish produce stand and he had me stop. He got a bunch of fresh Veggies and then we stopped at a Chinese restaurant where he went inside and gave the lady working there a bunch of them. As we were leaving he even had a short conversation with her in Chinese. I’m sure it was very simple things like “Have a good one” and “Goodbye” or something similar, but I thought it was cool he had learned it. That kind of thing is pretty rare around here.
In the car he was telling me how they had recently lost one of their children in a car accident. It was heartbreaking. Sounds like he has known them for quite while.
He then had me drive to a neighboring college town that has people from all over the world come to go to school, so it’s a fairly diverse place. He was telling me he liked it there because there were so many different kinds of interesting people. We stopped by his Dry Cleaners which was also ran by Chinese people and he left them with the other half of the vegetables.
Then on the way out of town he had me stop at the International Market. He asked me if I had ever tried Eel before and when I said I hadn’t he bought me a couple of cans (it’s ok, nothing to write home about imo).
So yeah, he was an old white redneck, but he wasn’t a total piece of shit and fairly open minded about some things. I’m not sure why he hates roundabouts, but that attitude is super common around here, among all sorts of people.
I asked my neighbor, he said Europeans are stupid for driving in circles all day. So, that’s how.
for a country who’s core values is Car, they suck at driving
Our core value is taking necessary services and pricing them like a luxury.
Spread everything out really far, get rid of public transit, and, since everybody still needs a license to drive your expensive cars, make the driving test super easy to pass so almost everybody can drive. Boom, 1.2 passengers per car and nobody can actually drive them well.
I reeeeal American I just don’t want my tax dollars going to fund other people’s firefighting costs. Can we privatize that??
Also a right to bear arms and own weapons is sacrosanct and very important to my people. Why can’t our people please finally be allowed go have nuclear weapons. Their kids need some too. Very important.
Idiots.
Yep. This person gets it. The auto and gasoline industry basically ruined the environment and our culture so a few select people can make a few $$$.
Our core value isn’t Car, it’s “individual freedom, especially at the cost or inconvenience of others”. It just so happens that Car aligns pretty well with that
So interesting to me that Americans think being dependent on a car is “freedom”. Individual freedom should be the freedom to get to where you need to go with viable options to walk, bike, train, bus, tram, or drive.
I think you’re focusing too much on the “individual freedom” bit and missing the “at the cost or inconvenience of others” bit
To be fair the mindset that a car means freedom is also quite common in Germany too. Especially in the countryside (tbf its often required if you dont want waste a lot of time due to shitty public transportation)
We rarely have other viable options. Long before most of us were born, the U.S. built an infrastructure centered around cars, sidelining other forms of transportation.
In America, owning a car is often the key to freedom of movement. So it’s no surprise people equate cars with freedom. Getting people to see how car dependency actually limits our freedom is like trying to wake someone from the Matrix.
No one can make a profit on people walking, so I dont understand how your point makes any sense.
edit: oh wait! footware and sports drink companies. OK, well, you’ve made some compelling points here. And we use small handed children to in America to make these shoes and sports drinks, right?
Yeah, you can’t drive like a dangerous asshole on your way to park your full size truck based SUV across two handicap spots if you don’t have a car in the first place!
you don’t have to be smart to drive, we made sure of that.
Hey, I represent that implication!
Muh freedum to die in a raging, alcohol sparked ball of fire, metal, bone, and blood.
Just like the founding fathers intended
A bunch of white landlords in their 20s‑ish who owned other human beings def understand me better than anyone else
This was brilliant.
I’ve never seen this copypasta and I love it.
I typed it up while driving through a roundabout. It came from the hea