TGTV’s Sam Philip has seen the signs, and he has a new idea on how to make our roads much safer
A few years back, the German municipality of Bohmte implemented a definitely not mad strategy to improve driving standards in its town centre: removing all the road signs.
The theory? That drivers would be more considerate when they weren’t ordered what to do. The results of this trial were, it seems, inconclusive, though there was an encouraging 70 per cent rise in motorists asking who’d nicked all the signs to der Bahnhof. But recently I’ve been wondering whether Bohmte (and other similar ‘shared space’ schemes across Europe) got things back to front.
Here’s why. I live not far from the Hemel Hempstead magic roundabout. For those unfamiliar with Hertfordshire’s transport infrastructure, Hemel Hempstead is a town in southeast England, its finest feature a road junction known as the magic roundabout. Not magic, but very much a roundabout. In fact, many roundabouts.
If you’ve sampled similar setups in Swindon, High Wycombe or Colchester, you’ll know the score. Hemel’s magic roundabout is in fact six mini-roundabouts, arranged in a circle to form one mega-roundabout. Drivers must travel clockwise around the mini-roundabouts, but can navigate the wider roundabout in either direction And if you’re thinking I’ve made it sound more complicated than it really is – nope. If anything, I’ve oversimplified the insanity.
Because, even when you’ve driven it many times, the magic roundabout remains incomprehensible. No driver seems to have the foggiest what’s going on. There is much hand waving and many facial expressions resembling Munch’s ‘The Scream’.
But here’s the thing. Somehow, the magic roundabout works. Traffic keeps flowing, cars reach their desired exits, few people drive into each other. Its designers would doubtless claim this is proof of the junction’s logical and intuitive design. But I reckon it’s the opposite: it is so fundamentally baffling th
