Also just recently re-submitted: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2833446
In particular, here's the WikiPedia article about the design: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diverging_diamond_interchange
It was terrible the first few years. Nobody could ever figure out which lane they were supposed to be in, and ended up driving on the wrong side of the crossed-over section. Granted, the people here are still having trouble figuring out roundabouts, but I found this very confusing my first couple times through the intersection.
What people usually attribute to bad driving is usually the fault of poor traffic planning. Humans tend to be the same, circumstances change.
Just keep moving or you will be stuck for hours: http://maps.google.com/?ll=42.361501,-71.070455&spn=0.00...
Something for everyone: overpass, circle, and jug handles:
I wholeheartedly agree that we should increase driving standards, and better traffic engineering is the first step. I was just commenting on the fact that most people I talk to don't want to learn how to make their morning commute safer and more efficient.
Here's a video describing the flow: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWHEi8baCPE
It's not very confusing exiting the highway and turning left - just follow the lights.
It is kind of confusing exiting the highway and turning right. Right-on-red is allowed, and to make such a maneuver you have to look in strange places for traffic that might hit you. I've almost messed it up a few times. The other option is to let people honk at you while you wait for a green.
I'm curious as to what will happen when the power to the lights fails.
I could see there being less accidents of the left-turn variety being exchanged for more less-dramatic accidents.
Aren't we better of just using roundabouts? or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundabout#Turbo_roundabouts??
A high accident rate is not proof that Massachusetts "has the worst drivers in the country". I've lived in Massachusetts (and New Jersey, California, and a bunch of other places that like to call themselves the "worst drivers"), but everywhere I go, it seems apparent to me that road conditions and layout account for the huge majority of deviations from place to place.
For example, in New Jersey there are a ton of highways that don't have onramps (or about 15 feet of it). Because of this, there are a lot more (I mean a LOT more) collisions on the "onramp" and people generally are used to swerving in front of 65-mph traffic from a complete stop.
In California you have just as many people (or maybe more) who swerve in and out of lanes at unreasonable speeds, but since there are so many lanes and since they're all so fantastically wide, that sort of behavior doesn't get punished as it might, say, on the Mass Pike or the Garden State Parkway. At the same time, city roads in California (at least in OC) tend to have much higher speed limits. This causes a marked increase in fatal collisions at these types of intersections...not because the people are inherently more aggressive, but because the roads shape their behavior.
What is it? Bad driver, or bad driving conditions?