Not that long ago, not that far from where I live, our community was presented with the opportunity to fix an inconvenient and dangerous intersection. It had been rural, once, and in those days the knot of roads where an interstate off-ramp, two frontage roads and a truck stop parking lot convene could simply be left uncontrolled. The people just kind of sorted it out. It was nice.

But the as these things go more folks showed up and started living and driving around. We turned the lumber mill into a bitcoin mine and built a concert venue next to the elementary school, and eventually that inconvenient tangle turned into a deadly mess. It was time to fix this thing.

So the egghead engineers showed up with their graph paper and their slide rules and their pocket protectors and pretty soon were like, “Yep! The best, safest, most efficient thing here is a roundabout. No doubt about it. Let’s get to work.” And that was all well and good until it was time to spend a few public bucks on on a public infrastructure project and we had to listen to the public. Ugh. The Public. They’re the worst. Seriously.

Because what came next can probably fairly be described as a shitstorm. In coffee shops, public scoping meetings, and comments sections all around western Montana la gente was incensed. Roundabouts are just the kind of vaguely European improvement that comes on the leading edge of the Agenda 21 death camps and deportations, remember. Roundabouts are European. Mussolini was European. Do you really need me to connect the dots? It turns out that the only thing rural America hates more than a roundabout is Hillary Clinton, and anymore I’m not even sure about that.

And so sure enough the traffic circle was torpedoed in the face of overwhelming scientific consensus on the basis of what amounts to “I might have to learn something new and that makes me uncomfortable.”

Because the evidence is ironclad. Roundabouts are safer than traffic lights. Roundabouts are more efficient than traffic lights. Roundabouts are cheaper than traffic lights. Roundabouts can easily be built to easily accommodate large trucks. And to their credit, in my experience even the most virulent of haters will concede, when presented with the overwhelming body of evidence, that fine, sure, maybe roundabouts would be ok if only everyone else had any idea how to use them. It seems there is a problem of widespread ignorance in America today.

And so I’d like to take this moment, in preparation for the nearly completed compound roundabout [clutches pearls] in town here, to point out that roundabouts are not that fucking hard. Here are a few pointers on how they work.

How To Use A Roundabout

(It’s Not That Fucking Hard)

1. Slow the Fuck Down – Yes, traffic circles are way more efficient than traffic lights. That doesn’t mean you don’t have to tap the brakes. You will see the damn thing coming, just, like, chill for one goddamn second and slow your roll as you approach.
2. Look to Your Fucking Left* – Think of it this way: a roundabout is not an intersection – it’s a very tiny, circular, one-way street. So unlike an intersection, you do not yield to the person on your right. This is indicated by the triangle signs that say “YIELD” as you approach the circle. So look to your left. If no one’s there, do your thing. If someone is there, please don’t hit them.
3. Don’t Fucking Stop – But let’s reiterate that that sign says “YIELD.” It does not say “STOP.” So really, if no one is there just slide on into the circle. If you slam on the brakes for no reason you’ll probably get rear ended by someone who knows how this works. And once you’re in there, that’s it, no more stopping. You’ve taken the circle, it’s yours. Move along.
4. Get the Fuck Out – That traffic circle isn’t yours forever, though, so when you’re done just get the fuck out of there. Don’t let anyone else in. If they’re not in the middle part, they yield to you.
5. Use Your Fucking Turn Signal – No one is keeping track of where you entered the circle, and where you’re headed, except for you. So you need to let people know what your intentions are. You know, like any time you turn, or change lanes, right? RIGHT**? But here’s the thing, remember how it’s not really an intersection? It’s a tiny, cute, little one-way? There is no way to turn left out of a traffic circle (unless you’ve really fucked up). Once you are in the intersection the use of your left turn signal will serve no purpose but to confuse people and make them hate (and possibly run into) you. As you’re approaching your exit from the circle, throw your right blinker on and get the fuck out.
6. That’s It – That’s it. You’re done. It’s not that fucking hard.

* Well, yeah, this all goes backwards in the UK, Australia, probably Singapore or something, but let’s face it: if you’re really that worried about roundabouts you probably don’t get abroad that often.

**I digress.

“Ugh,” you are, at this point, almost certainly thinking. “Another self-righteous blog post about bicycles. Just what the internet needs. Great.”

By now the audience has reduced by half (at least) as the rest of those folks navigated away to go look for FailBlog videos or something with baby animals exploring playground equipment. And I get it, you’ve all heard this diatribe before, and besides cyclists are just so damn annoying. That’s really it, at the end of the day.

Just this morning I was almost pasted by some guy hopping onto the sidewalk from riding toward oncoming traffic during rush hour. What a dickhead. And if you’re still reading you obviously know that all cyclists aren’t like that guy, and obviously as that happened he and I were both passed by like 20 people texting and driving on their way to work, but damn, he almost got me.

And hell, even the good cyclists are a pain in the neck. They’re all over the roads that they don’t even pay for, zigging and zagging and carrying on. And if you can look past the film of human grease they’ve accumulated from exercising while commuting and their lewd pants you’ll probably get splashed as you pass them with inches to spare because they’re all just drenched with smug*. They’re the worst. I get it.

But what I don’t get about folks who openly hate cyclists or tacitly endorse that aggression by driving when they shouldn’t is how else they see this playing out.

Because, like, there are a lot of us, people, you know? And then every day there are a few more. And we’re all pretty much going to the same place – stores, stores, restaurants, whatever. And traffic is already pretty bad, right? That’s what I hear. So have a seat and use your imagination for a minute, really. How do you see this going?

Here’s a couple ideas for how it’s probably not going to go:

• Magical Autonomous Subterranean Hyperloop Super Cars
  These are not going to save us. Sorry. Elon Musk and his ilk have continually shown that in driving innovation the technology industry is exceptional at creating value for shareholders, and not quite as good at solving problems that are measured by human lives, or goodness, or really anything other than currency. They are, however, pretty good at inventing problems for which they have a patent on the solution.
• Flying Cars
  File this with with the tunnel cars.
• Back to the Old Days
  Certainly to the chagrin of your grandfather and right-wing whackjob uncle who thinks our economy should still work like it’s 1890, things are not going to go back to the good ol’ days, when you never had to sit in traffic and a gallon of milk cost a nickle.
• Nuclear Winter
  Shoot actually this one might just play out. And it’ll look a lot like the old days, the wild west, I guess, but you’ll pay for things with ears or teeth or something and probably eat babies, if Cormac McCarty knows anything.
• Gradually Numbing Our Perception of What Is An Acceptable Distance to Sit in Our Cars, Isolated by Glass and Air Conditioning and Podcasts from Our Communities, as We Increasingly Sprawl and Pave the Interstices between Cities and Towns and We Find that Eventually We Have Created a Kind of Infinite Strip Mall of Mega-Box Stores and Build-a-Bears and Office Parks and Office Park Parking Lots and We Have No Choice to Meet Our Basic Needs than to Sit in a Car for 45 (60? 90!) Minutes at a Time to Simply Buy Lettuce or Something, or Even Worse it Becomes So That the Horror of Doing So is Insurmountable and So We Order Our Lettuce on the Internet and Never Feel That The Cost – Financial, Emotional, ETC – Is Worth Leaving Home and We Further Insulate Ourselves from Each Other and Simply Maintain “Communities” Through AOL Instant Messenger, or Whatever, So that this Virtual Community Usurps Actual Community as a Tenet of Our Values and We as a Species Shrivel and Withdraw and Do Not Expire By Way of (the now curiously intriguing) Nuclear Winter but Simply Cease to Exist in Any Meaningful Way.
  Phoenix, in other words. Shoot that’s already a thing.

And suddenly the idea that conserving space in our cities, towns, and communities by leaving behind the 6,000 pound handbags that we use to put off retirement and murder people just doesn’t seem that crazy. It is one of two logical progressions of how our communities will develop.

Transportation problems are not ones that need a new invention. We have it, and stamp them out for a few hundred dollars a piece. Cars, obviously, are not going anywhere (and nor should they, they’re great), but we need to stop thinking of them as the norm, and start thinking of them as the exception. Without this kind of shift in how we leave the house, we will continue to literally pave the way to living in an asphalt hellscape.

Bicycle evangelists are about as annoying as all the other kinds of evangelists, and so we can be easy to write off. But the premise is unassailable: the only path to livable communities is through a collective embrace of sustainable transportation – buses and bikes.

*I hear only diesel fumes can get it off you.