Evaluation of Roundabout Crash Rates/Effectiveness Roundabout Driver Education for Local Agency Use

Status: Active
Project Start Date: 08/19/2024

Summary:

Roundabouts are becoming a common design to improve safety and operations at intersections in Minnesota. They are often touted as a simple and comprehensive implementation of the Safe Systems Approach. The benefits of roundabouts include reducing the rate of severe crashes, improving traffic flow, and reducing idling and local air pollution. In most cases, these benefits are seen after a period when driver behavior has had time to naturally adjust to a newly installed roundabout. Although the severe and injury crashes have decreased, property damage crashes have increased in some areas after roundabouts have been constructed. Additionally, there have been reports that driver education courses may not include or include inaccuracies. Hence, additional education/outreach efforts are needed within driver education. There also have been some questions about how to choose the right size of roundabout for local agencies. This project will expand on the earlier work done, gather more crash data and update the analysis to develop statistics based on the long-term effects of roundabouts for safety to understand if there are long-term safety improvements related to behavioral changes. Additionally, it will help identify the conditions for which different types of roundabouts are most appropriate.