Roundabouts: Problems of and strategies for access

Abstract The increasing number of roundabout intersections is due in part to the fact that they significantly reduce death and injury rates for motor vehicle occupants. However, roundabouts can exacerbate the challenges that pedestrians with visual impairments encounter when crossing streets. Pedestrians who are blind must use their hearing to perceive gaps in traffic that are long enough to permit crossing the street, or they must detect when vehicles have yielded for them. Strategies to enhance the ability of individuals who are blind to detect gaps and to detect vehicles that have yielded for them are needed to increase access to these intersections by individuals who are blind.