Comment by Lvl999Noob
3 hours ago
Not a civil engineer but as far as I know, the space is part of the point. If you keep the roads straight but just draw a circle in the middle, you don't have a roundabout. It only works properly if the drivers have to curve in and out of it.
You could keep the same space I guess by pinching the roads tighter near the entries/exits but I don't think anyone is talking about that.
The UK has mini roundabouts, which are just a painted white circle on the road: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b0/Mini-rou...
Drivers treat them as a normal roundabout by giving way to traffic on the right.
I contest that drivers always treat it the same. They often go through the circle/cut th corner when there is low traffic, and I know at least one mini roundabout where traffic is way less frequent in one direction and the other direction is treated as the "main road" without slowing down.
I mostly like them though.