Traffic Circles

Working in Portsmouth, NH now involves me generally taking a route down Rt. 16/Rt. 1 to get to work on a daily basis. While in transit on the route, you'll run into a classic friend - a traffic circle.

The Portsmouth Traffic Circle

In my driving experience, people have not been too graceful in respect to handling traffic circles. From what I understand, traffic circles should really help reduce traffic loads by allowing a consistent flow of traffic. At the very least, if you're in line, at least you're constantly moving in that line. I've found this to not be the case, especially here in NH for whatever reason. However, driving through the circle so often, I wonder why that is exactly. After observing for a while, I've come up with a few points for people to ponder when attacking a traffic circle.

1. Wait for a space to merge into the traffic circle
   I've found that most people attempt to merge into the circle as closely as they can to another car in the circle. This is a poor strategy in the traffic circle since you then force cars in the other lines to have to wait longer to find another opening. This in turn builds up those pesky lines which we want to avoid. Sure, it doesn't matter if one person does it, but since everyone is doing it this way, it causes for some big line buildups. I suggest leaving probably about 4 car lengths open for another car to merge into. Even leaving about 3 leaves many people uncertain about merging in, so 4 is probably ideal for a compromise among everyone in line and in the circle and trying to merge in.
2. When merging, accelerate gradually through the circle (and stick to the limit!)
   One thing that's incredibly easy to do when dealing with being stuck in a giant line at the traffic circle is to gun it through the circle and jump between two cars as quickly as possible. This is not the proper approach. Instead, try and  accelerate gradually to get up to about the speed limit. Also, attempt to abide the speed limit fairly closely! This is really important because it makes you more predictable to the other cars waiting to merge into traffic. So, gradual acceleration and follow the speed limit!
3. Leave the lines individually and not as a cluster
   Like mentioned above, when one is stuck in line waiting to merge in for a while, it's easy and understandable to be slightly frustrated. However, this in turn causes people to try and get out of line as fast as possible. This includes not leaving space for more cars to fit into from other lanes and leaving the lines in packs instead of car-by-car. The reason this is an issue is because it causes the first point I made - You fill up all the gaps for others to merge. Desirably, when one car leaves the line, the people of all the lines should feel comfortable with the idea of looking forward to another space to merge into. When leaving in clusters between two cars with proper spacing and such, this gets taken away by filling up the nice gap you originally had. Attempt to go out as individual cars.
4. Love the yield
   For some reason, I've found people a little clumsy up here in NH with the concept of a yield sign. Yield signs simply inform one that there could be oncoming traffic and you should be prepared to stop IF NEED BE. Stop signs insist that you do stop. While yields may be red and white just like stop signs, and it may be not a horrible safety strategy to take yield signs conservatively, it can cause for issues when you stop for no strong reason. This is exactly the situation here at traffic circles. If you have an opening that looks good, don't hit your brakes, don't down shift, don't let off the gas, just don't slow down! In fact, I'd say speeding up would be ideal in this situation. Obviously, take my advice with a sense of caution and be a smart driver, but also don't fear the sign - try and not slow down as much as possible.
   

I think if more people followed tips like these/came up with ideas like these, traffic circles could be much more highly utilized and effective. Granted, there's only so much one can do for traffic, but as drivers we play the largest part in reducing the traffic and maximizing efficiency by not idling and keeping traffic moving. These tips should hopefully help improve your handling of the traffic circle!

See the city, see the zoo
Traffic light won't let me through

Phish, Slave to the Traffic Light