A traffic circle or rotary is a type of intersection that has a generally circular central island. Entering traffic must typically alter direction and speed to avoid the island, creating a circular flow in one direction. In most applications, traffic circles replace the stop lights and traffic signs that regulate flow in other intersections.
In English-speaking countries other than the United States, circular junctions or intersections are typically in the form of roundabouts which give priority to circulating traffic and which are physically designed to slow traffic entering the junction to improve safety, so that the roads typically approach the junction radially; whereas rotaries are frequently designed to try to increase speeds, and thus have roads that enter the traffic circle tangentially.
In the U.S., traffic engineers use the term roundabout for intersections in which entering traffic must yield to traffic already in the circle, reserving the term traffic circle for those in which entering traffic is controlled by stop signs, traffic signals, or is not formally controlled.
Famous quotes containing the words traffic and/or circle:
“There was a girl who was running the traffic desk, and there was a woman who was on the overnight for radio as a producer, and my desk assistant was a woman. So when the world came to an end, we took over.”
—Marya McLaughlin, U.S. television newswoman. As quoted in Women in Television News, ch. 3, by Judith S. Gelfman (1976)
“Perchance we may,
Where now this night is day,
And even through faith of still averted feet,
Making full circle of our banishment,
Amazed meet;”
—Coventry Kersey Dighton Patmore (1823–1896)