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?
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