Fox 4 News carried a two-minute story on the Brand Rd Roundabout between Beltline and Naaman School Rds on their 9 p.m. broadcast last night. The opinions captured "at the scene" weren't very supportive of the traffic circle.

They reported that according to the Transportation Dept this stretch of road has the worst accident rate in the city.
 

 
The reporter, James Rose, said that drivers were going slower and were being more cautious but "we saw one confused driver turn into oncoming traffic just to make a left turn." It wasn't actually the driver turning left that was confused. It is many of the other drivers approaching the circle that do not yield to vehicles already in the circle, even though Yield signs are posted properly.

It was also reported that this is an experiment. It is not a perfect solution or even perfectly constructed but it will be helpful to know if accidents decrease. Roundabouts properly constructed have a demonstrated record - from years of data - that they are safer than four-way stops and light-controlled intersections.

Here's the video story at Fox 4 News: Brand Roundabout.

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Comments:

Comment from: Gary Williams [Visitor]

If it is possible to get the traffic circle on Brand road removed, please do so as quickly as possible before somebody gets seriously injured or killed there. And if it's possible to find out who in the City of Garland management structure bought off on this poorly planned structure I'd like to know. If it is an elected official I intend to campaign vigorously for their removal whenever they come up for re-election. What a shameful waste of taxpayers money!! It smells of big-money interference to me. It is no coincidence that a new up-scale housing development has an entrance at that very location. On my block, when my street intersects a major thoroughfare, I must yield to the main road traffic, due to a stop sign. This is how it's done all over the country. But somebody decided that these up-scale homeowners should not have to be inconvenienced with a trivial matter of yielding to traffic. So they put in a traffic circle to make the majority give way to the wealthy. Shame on you!! Get rid of it and put up a stop sign.

08/25/06 @ 15:26

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