A Roundabout Way To Make Communities Safer

 

By Frank Filocomo

American cities ought to be walkable and safe. That shouldn't be too much to ask. 

Unfortunately, though, our car-centric culture has made pedestrian safety an afterthought. 

Just read Streetsblog to get a taste for how dangerous many of New York City's intersections are.

This, from a recent Streetsblog article:

Will the city wait until a kid is killed before making a notoriously dangerous Queens neighborhood safe?

That’s what parents who send their children to the Baby Steps daycare in Rego Park are wondering after another near-miss right in front of the early childhood education facility that took out the front fence as well as crushed a memorial to a cyclist killed by a driver in 2017. That crash was in the same week in April 2025 when another driver struck a 5-year-old crossing the street.

Americans, however, need not be subjected to these dangerous intersections. 

In an instructive article for Public Square, Robert Steuteville makes the case for roundabouts as a safer alternative to the all-too-quotidian traffic light intersections:

Roundabouts force cars to slow down, thus creating a safer environment for pedestrians to navigate. What's more, unlike the traditional intersection, roundabouts keep traffic flowing. 

Carmel, Indiana, Steuteville writes, has a whopping 158 roundabouts. 

From the article:

A city with few traffic lights, such as Carmel, needs few turn lanes—which blow out intersection dimensions and make crossing distances much longer. Instead, crossings at roundabout intersections are broken into two, giving pedestrians refuge in the middle. Well-designed roundabouts slow traffic to 20 mph or less—speeds that are much safer for people outside of cars.

This is the way, and other cities should be taking notes. 

According to Dr. Virginia Sisiopiku of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, roundabouts reduce severe crashes by 78%. 

I'm convinced: roundabouts work. So, the question is: why don't we have them all over the country? 

Conversations at Baseball Games

Citi Field, 5/29/26

By Frank Filocomo 

On Friday, I went to a Mets vs. Marlins game with my good friend, Laik Green, whom, despite being a New Jersey- resident and former part-time New Yorker, is a fan of the latter. "The Fish," he usually calls them. 

To be sure, I'm a life-long Yankees fan. My father, upon coming to this country by way of Calabria in 1960, quickly became a diehard fan of the ole Bronx Bombers. He used to listen to games on his little radio. And that was when they sucked! 

Anyhow, on Friday, I was, along with Laik, a Marlins fan, too. 

Laik and I are baseball fans, so we we're pretty dialed in the whole game. In fact, most of our conversation consisted of strategy, play-by-play commentary, and other rank punditry. 

Sure, we spoke about other things, but, for the most part, we were invested in America's Pastime. 

The whole time, I couldn't help but notice the Zoomers to the left of us who were standing in a circle, talking, and facing away from the action for the duration of the game. Laik and I were confounded.

If socialization was the point, why do it at a baseball game and not at a bar? 

Then, I thought to myself: Are we doing this wrong? Should this be a time for non-baseball-related banter? It just didn't make sense to me...

But then I reminded myself: Quality time with friends can be spent in relative silence. 

I think there's a bit of a misconception about what it means to have a good hang, so to speak, that conversation must be flowing the whole time, like how a radio show isn't supposed to have any "dead air." 

That is false. One need not be loquacious to have a good time with friends. Sometimes, just being in the presence of people whom you care about is enough. While the two of us were laser-focused on the game, we still exchanged the odd quip and took time between innings to get hotdogs and over-priced beer. 

When it comes to conversation, sometimes less is more.