You know how tense the British can get about these things, worrying about how something small can still give satisfaction? The French are far more relaxed and don't let anxiety cloud their judgement. It turns out that they went and got some facts about roundabouts (what did you think this was about?). In a piece by Richard Scrase, Traffic junction expert Bernard Guichet, from the French Transport Ministry, says "We found that very large roundabouts with multiple lanes cause many problems and are not good for safety." "...at the international level, some countries (including the USA) have traffic engineers who are seeking to build roundabouts that are too complicated." In the same piece Richard Scrase looks at the French safety data and concludes " These (referring to small single lane) roundabouts slow vehicles down and turn them so that any collisions are restricted to glancing blows between vehicles traveling in broadly the same direction. Regular deaths and serious injuries are replaced by shunts and bumps." "They are not to be confused with traditional big, high-speed traffic circles, which were built years ago in Paris, London, and Washington, D.C. Designed to support the dangerous combination of high-speed entry and multilane weaving, most such traffic circles suffer high crash rates." (http://www.eurorap.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/iRAP-case-study-5_France-roundabouts.pdf) I think we all agree that any accident is one too many and it is important to strive to improve road safety for all users. We should however question the analysis and conclusions NCC has drawn from safety data and the assumptions it has made about its proposal. There are few if any roundabouts in urban Newcastle that allow entry speeds up to 50mph. In general it is differential speed between users (not just motorists) that is a hazard (that is why a 60mph country road is the most hazardous and a motorway the least). In rush hour Blue House has one or two entries slowed to a crawl whilst the others have vehicles piling in at 40-50mph. The NCC proposal does partly address this by putting signals on the large multi lane roundabout proposed but it adds a whole host of other hazards that the French would certainly not be happy with. Merci Mike.