Raymond Chen asks, What happened to the traffic circle at the corner of 156th Ave NE and NE 56th Way? Apparently tort happened.
A car was driving down the street in excess of the speed limit and failed to negotiate the circle, resulting in the car going off the road. In the flurry of legal action that ensued, somehow the City of Redmond ended up being held responsible for creating “dangerous driving conditions” or something like that. As a result, the City of Redmond went around removing all the city’s traffic circles and replacing them with speed bumps.
It really puzzles me why people have such animosity to roundabouts. I suppose it comes from the distinction between traffic circles and roundabouts. The difference is that in traffic circles the merging traffic has the right-of-way. Since this is just plain stupid, it is no wonder that drivers hate them.