The roundabout revolution shows Americans can still act rationally.

Last summer, Engler Road, a street I drive nearly every day, was under construction. The experience was, shall we say, a pain. Every morning, when I had to drive my kids to the community center, I was forced onto a route that added five to ten minutes to my trip. “What are they building?” I asked my wife, who pays more attention to community projects. The city was installing three new roundabouts, she informed me, two at four-way stops and one at a busy traffic-light intersection near our children’s schools. I grumbled, but by September the work was complete, and the results were amazing. My commute time had been cut in half. The experience caused me to take a closer look at the roundabout revolution quietly underway across America, which carries important lessons on economics and progress.

Roundabouts: A Brief HistoryRoundabouts: A Brief History

The concept of a circular junction for motor vehicles dates to about 1900. Some claim the first roundabout was built in Görlitz, Germany, in 1899, while others contend the distinction belongs to Paris (the Place de l’Étoile in 1907). Whatever the case, the first “modern” roundabouts, with yield-on-entry and tighter curves to slow speeds, didn’t begin appearing until the United Kingdom widely embraced the design in the 1960s.

Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that for generations Americans associated roundabouts with Europe. Many Americans were introduced to them in the 1985 comedy National Lampoon’s European Vacation. In the film, the Griswolds visit London, and Clark (Chevy Chase) gets trapped in an endless loop outside Parliament. (Homer Simpson would have a similar experience years later.)

The scene was ridiculous, but it captured a truth: Americans were clueless about roundabouts. When European Vacation was shot, there was not a single roundabout in the United States, according to official sources.

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