If you want to come to us and you are on the connecting road from the motorway, you first have to drive around 6 of these roundabouts. It’s like a round of roundabout roulette, where you’re betting on getting through without being hit by another car.

As in many countries around the world, roundabouts are becoming increasingly popular with traffic planners in Australia as they are believed to have some advantages over conventional intersections:

Roundabouts: A round thing for traffic flow

1. Safety First: Roundabouts are great at reducing accidents. That is a good thing because we all know how much of a headache dealing with accidents can be (literally and figuratively).
2. Improved Traffic Flow: Roundabouts keep the traffic moving, like a good dance party. There are no stop signs or traffic lights to slow things down, so you can just keep on rolling.
3. Reduced Congestion: Roundabouts can help reduce traffic congestion, which means less time spent sitting in traffic and more time enjoying life.
4. Lower Cost: Roundabouts can save money because they require less infrastructure and maintenance than traditional intersections. Who doesn’t love saving a few bucks?

Great for Cars, Not so Great for Pedestrians and Crowded Cities!

1. Increased Complexity: Roundabouts can be confusing for some drivers, especially those who are directionally challenged. It’s like trying to solve a Rubik’s Cube while driving.
2. Pedestrian Perils: Pedestrians might have to dodge traffic to get across a roundabout.
3. Larger Footprint: Roundabouts require more space than traditional intersections. But that can be a challenge in densely populated areas with limited space.
4. Gridlock Gremlins: While rare, roundabouts can get clogged up if too many cars try to enter at once or if people forget how to yield, which can be a recipe for chaos (or at least some honking).

Roundabouts reduce speed – sometimes quite abruptly

OK, the theory sounds pretty good: roundabouts are supposed to reduce the risk of accidents. But I wonder if anyone can explain that to the hoons in Australia. Because on Saturday and Sunday nights, the roads get wild and crazy. These incapacitated racers have only one goal: to pimp their modified cars and race around. And that works great on wide roads, as long as it weren’t for those damn roundabouts…

After every weekend, at least a few traffic signs on the six roundabouts on our arterial road are flat as a flounder. The city council then puts them back up the following week, but the next weekend the madness starts all over again. The hoons will probably even brag about their “adventure” when a roundabout suddenly emerges from the darkness and their spoilered and roaring vehicles are suddenly abruptly slowed down to a standstill.

Roundabouts: confusion about right of way and lane choice

It is not only on hoon nights that there are problems around roundabouts. When driving at roundabouts, many people don’t seem to know exactly who has the right of way or which lane to take. And often they forget to indicate. This confusion increases with the size and complexity of the roundabout, especially if there is more than one lane going in the same direction.

Yet the rules to follow on a roundabout in Australia are actually quite simple:

Rules on the roundabout

Probably the most important rule is that you must always give way to vehicles already on the roundabout. In addition, you should only enter when there is a sufficient and safe gap in the traffic, and of course always drive clockwise around the island.

If the lanes leading to the roundabout are marked with arrows, you must follow their direction.

If you intend to turn left:

1. Approach the roundabout in the left lane or lanes.
2. Blink left as you approach the roundabout.
3. Continue to signal to the left as you leave the roundabout.
4. Switch off the indicator after you have left the roundabout.

When driving straight ahead on a roundabout:

1. Approach without indicating.
2. However, turn left when exiting if appropriate.
3. Switch off the indicator when you have exited the roundabout.

To turn right:

1. Approach the roundabout in the right-hand lane or lane.
2. Blink to the right as you approach the roundabout.
3. Continue to signal to the right until you are ready to leave the roundabout.
4. Blink to the left before leaving the roundabout.
5. Switch off the indicator after you have left the roundabout.

However, every day we see people entering the roundabout in the left lane and then turning right. Or they indicate right but turn left or go straight ahead. And very often, when entering the roundabout, people do not pay attention at all to the vehicles in the roundabout that have the right of way. Basically, one must always drive carefully and defensively at roundabouts.

If you ever wonder why it’s called roundabout or traffic circle and not squareabout or traffic hexagon – now you know: it’s all about going clockwise around the island, not wildly geometric.

And if you are really unsure which direction to take at the roundabout, just take the exit back home and try again tomorrow.

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A hoon is a person who deliberately drives a vehicle in a reckless or dangerous manner, generally in order to provoke a reaction from onlookers.

Hoon activities (or hooning) can include speeding, burnouts, doughnuts, or screeching tyres. Those commonly identified as being involved in hooning are young and predominantly male drivers in the age range of 17 and 35 years.

Probably there is no real word for the term “Hoon” in other languages, as these specific behaviors occur to a much lesser extent outside of Australia.

As an observer in Australia you notice that there are a lot of extremely pimped-up cars here and the spoiler on the car generally enjoys extreme popularity. In addition, there are so-called “sports exhausts”, which are primarily intended to simulate a sporty vehicle with a sporty engine, as for some vehicle owners, the sound of a vehicle is an important (emotional) factor that is significantly influenced by the muffler.

It’s been almost 40 years since a Formula One World Champion came from Australia (Alan Jones 1980), but apparently many Australian men think that they were born Formula One champions or at least as cool as James Dean was once.

To emphasize this feeling you of course have to have a corresponding car. Since often for real sports cars (Ferrari, Lamborghini, Porsche, Mercedes AMG, Bugatti, etc.) the financial resources are missing, so-called muscle cars serve as a substitute. These are cars that are based on serial-production models, but are sometimes much more motorized. Furthermore, the cars are then equipped with often extremely ridiculous-looking (and useless) spoilers in the size of a pub-counter, fake air inlets indicated with stickers and other common car accessories such as wide low-profile tires, alloy wheels, lowered suspension, door sills and not least the important sports exhaust.

Some mounted mufflers have dimensions like the drainpipes of toilets and sound alike. Many are designed so that if you attract the wrong type of attention, you can make the exhaust quiet.

And if you already have such a car, you are naturally forced to show it off. For this you have to drive through every residential area at least once and demonstrate again and again how extremely loud the sports exhaust can be. Of course, both windows are cranked down and one hand has to hang out. In the back, the thin series pipe of the four-cylinder flows into a stovepipe into which a handball would fit and the motor  unleashes its 70 hp at 7000 rpm.

In Europe one would think that the exhaust is certainly broken and needs a workshop visit, but among muscle drivers here in Australia, it seems to be considered particularly cool and masculine, if one can press down the accelerator and the exhaust is doing a lot of noise.

The highlight is the burn-out. Many think of burnouts as more of a personal crisis, which might also apply to the Hoons. But with the burn-out referred to here, the hoons spin the wheels of one axle (with the brake on the other axle pulled). This not only consumes a lot of fuel, but the tires wear out very quickly and are then unusable. Also that other parts of the vehicle, such as e.g. gearboxes and drive shafts, wear out considerably, seem to play just as little role for hoons as the fact, that such antisocial behaviour is more likely to be expected from pubescent teenagers than from adult men.

In almost all areas you can find traces of burn-outs, in and out of town, in residential areas such as business districts, on secondary and main roads and even on motorways. In some places, where the police rarely come past, large-scale extreme tire abrasion as well as a lot of remnants of tires testify to firmly established meeting places for such (usually nocturnal) activities.

In fact, it seems that the hoons have copied something from the graffiti scene here, and try to leave burn-out tags in as prominent a place as possible, e.g. a busy intersection. You can then brag about that to other hoons (because only they will find something like that great).

While almost all states in Australia have tightened hounding prevention legislation, which can sometimes result in the vehicles being impounded and disposed by the police, this does not seem to have any effect. Every day, and especially every night, we hear the hoons driving around, annoying everyone with their extremely noisy antisocial macho behaviour, and see new burn marks almost every day on the streets.

It is interesting that these sports exhausts, which can be switched between noise and normal, can be legally sold. Some even advertise indirectly that near the police, etc., the exhausts can be switched to quiet:

This means, if you attract the wrong type of attention, you can make the exhaust quiet. When it is switched to quiet, it is dead quiet – like stock. This is especially handy for early morning starts, talking hands free, or if Police are about.

Possibly it would help if in all states in Australia something like a motor vehicle inspection would be compulsory, in which one has to get the car regularly every two years checked for safety…

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