The Michigan Left is objectively insane. You can't turn left, so you go straight, make a U-turn, and then turn right to go where you originally wanted to go. It's three moves to accomplish one turn. It makes no sense. But Michiganders? We're fine with it. We've been doing it our whole lives. No problem. It's just how things work here.

But a roundabout? A simple, elegant circle where you yield, merge, and exit? Absolute chaos. People stop in the middle of the roundabout. They go the wrong way. They treat it like a four-way stop and wait for permission from the traffic gods. Someone will be sitting there with a completely clear opening, not moving, just staring at the circle like it's going to explain itself.

The irony is that roundabouts are easier than Michigan Lefts. You enter, you go around, you exit. That's it. But because they're not shaped like a bizarre detour through a gas station parking lot, Michiganders don't trust them. We've been conditioned to accept the most unnecessarily complicated traffic patterns in the country, and now a roundabout shows up and we act like we've never seen pavement before.

Every roundabout in Michigan has at least one car stopped dead in the circle, blocking everyone, because the driver is having an existential crisis about which exit to take. Meanwhile, that same driver will execute a flawless Michigan Left at 50 mph without a second thought.

We'll drive backwards through a snowstorm on a freeway with no lane markings, but a roundabout? That's where we draw the line.

Reposted from, https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61570334656768