With traffic deaths soaring, one Midwest City offers a proven solution

The estimates released this week from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration are sobering: traffic fatalities in the U.S. last year reached their highest level since 2005.

Among the cities bucking that grisly trend is Carmel, Indiana, and the city’s seven-term Mayor, Jim Brainard, says the answer can be found in the more than 140 roundabouts the city has installed, replacing all but a few of the city’s traffic lights and four-way stop signs.

Mayor Brainard, says a look at the numbers of both fatalities and injury-related accidents in Carmel vs. other Indiana cities (see charts below my signature) reveal an unmistakable correlation between roundabouts and safety.  (This is especially reinforced in the personal injury chart, since the three cities with the best records after Carmel have more roundabouts than any cities other than Carmel).

Of course there are manifold benefits to roundabouts beyond safety – fuel and electricity savings, as highlighted last fall in front-page New York Times story , traffic flow, attractive landscaping and other cosmetic features, etc. – but safety is probably the biggest, all the more so as traffic deaths are rising again throughout the nation.

Mayor Brainard said the two traffic deaths in Carmel last year including an 85-year-old man who stepped in front of a truck in one of the few remaining traffic light intersections in the city, and another who crashed at 6:30 in the morning at a speed of 110 mph (in a 30 mph zone).  That was in a roundabout but had he been at a traffic light he could well have taken others with him.