The Round-About Rule

 Back in 1978, when I first came to Germany....there was this slight mention of round-abouts (traffic circles) in the German driver's training episode.  The instructor spent about five minutes going through the thrill of traffic circles, and there were probably one single question on the 100-item test relating to the circle.

For two years....around the Frankfurt region....on the rare times that I did drive beyond the base....I never encountered a single round-about.

1984 to 1986?  On my second tour?  I probably encountered about twenty round-abouts.  

From 1993 on?  It was a hit-and-miss thing....you might go a whole year and never see or experience a single one.  Sometimes you'd wander into some town and go through eight in a single day.  

I live about six miles from a small German town (12,000 residents) that has around forty-five round-abouts.  In my local city of Wiesbaden?  There might be ten in the entire city.

Lately, the cops are onto enforcing the round-about rule.....you MUST signal as you enter, and exit the round-about.  Failure to signal?  Ten Euro fine.  If you enter and go LEFT (instead of right)?  That's a 35 Euro fine.  If you park inside of the round-about (there's never room for this anyway)....it's a fifty Euro fine.

Where did round-abouts start?  Well....most folks argue in the UK....in the mid-1950s.  Some argue that the French started this in 1778.....in central Paris.  Some Germans will argue it was in Gorlitz....right around 1900.  

At some point after 2000, Ramstein (the base) went to the circles......building around twenty of them.  With the gate renovations in the past five years....there's probably another dozen thats been added.  

I'm not anti-round-about....but I'm not pro-round-about either.  

My negativity intensifies mostly when you have a two-lane (particularly if you go to a 3-lane round-about).  Your intensity of concentration bumps up a notch or two....with two lanes, and how you exit (or if you make a second or third circle....trying to get to the right lane for exit purposes).  

Around five or six years ago....there was a German story from my region....older couple (guy/gal were in their 80s) who'd planned a grocery trip....to a town that they didn't typically visit.  It's safe to say that guy driving probably didn't have full concentration of where they were going, or knew that four traffic circles were in the route.  At some point about six hours into a 45-minute trip....he pulled into a gas station and admitted he was 'stone-cold-lost' and needed some help to find his way back home.  He'd taken an exit too early, and hit another circle later that just further complicated matters (bringing him at least sixty kilometers away from his intended target).  

The intensity of building more traffic circles?  That's the rather odd thing.  If I got back to my old village around Kaiserslautern/Ramstein.....there's probably over two-hundred round-abouts which now exist.....where in the 1993 period....there were just two.  At the pace of things?  I would suggest in another decade, that a minimum of four-hundred round-abouts will exist in that one single region.