A traffic circle or rotary is a type of intersection that has a generally circular central island. Entering traffic must typically alter direction and speed to avoid the island, creating a circular flow in one direction. In most applications, traffic circles replace the stop lights and traffic signs that regulate flow in other intersections.
In English-speaking countries other than the United States, circular junctions or intersections are typically in the form of roundabouts which give priority to circulating traffic and which are physically designed to slow traffic entering the junction to improve safety, so that the roads typically approach the junction radially; whereas rotaries are frequently designed to try to increase speeds, and thus have roads that enter the traffic circle tangentially.
In the U.S., traffic engineers use the term roundabout for intersections in which entering traffic must yield to traffic already in the circle, reserving the term traffic circle for those in which entering traffic is controlled by stop signs, traffic signals, or is not formally controlled.
Famous quotes containing the words traffic and/or circle:
“If you don’t have a policeman to stop traffic and let you walk across the street like you are somebody, how are you going to know you are somebody?”
—John C. White (b. 1924)
“Change begets change. Nothing propagates so fast. If a man habituated to a narrow circle of cares and pleasures, out of which he seldom travels, step beyond it, though for never so brief a space, his departure from the monotonous scene on which he has been an actor of importance would seem to be the signal for instant confusion.... The mine which Time has slowly dug beneath familiar objects is sprung in an instant; and what was rock before, becomes but sand and dust.”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)