Re: shuttle disaster
On Sat, Feb 08, 2003 at 10:36:13PM -0800, Paul Johnson wrote:
> On Sat, Feb 08, 2003 at 08:55:15PM +0000, Pigeon wrote:
> > In Bedford there is a rather daft roundabout laid out like this:
> >
> > | | Ashburnham Rd
> > | |
> > ___/ \__________
> > __ /
> > Car __ O <- the roundabout
> > park \___________________
> > Midland Rd
> >
> > People turning right from Midland Rd into Ashburnham Rd occasionally
> > do what you describe, but only ever in the middle of the night when
> > there are no other cars on the roads. I have never seen it done under
> > normal traffic conditions, nor have I seen it done on roundabouts
> > whose layout doesn't incite it so blatantly as the above example. I
>
> That's a typical modern American roundabout you describe above. Older
> ones are much larger (like the size of the inner ring of the Magic
> Roundabout previously mentioned).
Looking at your reply in mutt's page viewer, it munged the diagram,
apparently by converting spaces to tabs (well something did, it was
originally entered with all spaces, but editing this reply I find tabs
in it - which I have changed back to spaces) which rather ruined the
main point, which was to show not the size of the island, but the fact
that it is way off centre, so that when making the right turn
mentioned above it is entirely natural to go the wrong way around the
roundabout, acting as if there was no roundabout there.
<snip>
> Same here. Vehicles obviously from rural Oregon or out of state are
> usually good to lay back a few extra meters from, because they either
> can't or won't sort out a traffic pattern that has a sign describing
> the maneuver in a simple diagram approaching the roundabout warning
> you of the traffic change, and another one on the roundabout itself
> describing the only legal movement around the damn thing.
>
> Your average Oregonian roundabout-ahead sign...
> http://www.mrtraffic.com/circleadvsign.jpg
>
> The sign telling you the only legal way of taking the circle (white
> signs are must-dos)
> http://www.trans.ci.portland.or.us/trafficcalming/images/pictures/circlesign5500.GIF
Good signs, kind of hard to misinterpret...
> Your average (small) Portland roundabout (larger ones do not have stop
> signs)
> http://www.mrtraffic.com/circleport1.jpg
Well, that one does look way off centre in the photo. In fact, it
looks so off centre that a lot of vehicles would have difficulty
getting between the island and the kerb. Is that a peculiarity to try
and keep trucks out of residential streets? The off-centre nature of
the Bedford roundabout is because it was plonked in the physical
centre of the available space as opposed to the logical centre about
which traffic would naturally pivot, and full-size trucks regularly
snake around it, or over it.
> And apparently Delaware's department of transportation is either
> stupid or insane or both...
> http://www.state.de.us/research/register/september2000/signing and marking.revised---V-1-12.gif
AAARRGGHH!!!
Incidentally, when telling mutt to pipe this message to 'grep http >>
list.of.urls' (as a preliminary to wgetting the images) it munged the
long URLs by wrapping the long lines, so the grep only pulled out half
the URL. Is it possible to tell it not to do this?
(Hey, we're on topic again!)
Pigeon
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