Roundabout

 

Crescents, you would think, are designed and built to slow down traffic. Indeed, to slow down life in general, life being a matter of not knowing precisely what is around the next corner. Time bends and space bends light. At times though it is hard to know what to think. A vehicle picking up speed around a crescent risks unforeseen mishaps, a pedestrian stepping out, a magpie on the white line, or another vehicle carelessly overtaking in a blind spot. Crescents don’t have to equate with sedate, they can be industrious and pleasant, but you expect drivers to go slow with the bend. This view has been tested once more with the latest flattening of the roundabout sign. You wonder if the red inverted triangle universally imprinted in the mind as Give Way, has ever entered the consciousness of these pole vaulters. Their grasp of the concept Roundabout is at a very early stage of development. Together with the steel guard rail on the other side of this particular roundabout, which is driven into several times per year by truck drivers with scant regard for circles, we have here our own local (albeit minor) version of the Montague Street Bridge. Drivers have a mind of their own, some of them, that is a mind not attentive to anyone else, or any thing else. Drivers, some of them, will cross three lanes of a freeway without using the blinker. Drivers, one or two, accelerate as amber has turned to red. You would think drivers would understand that crescents and roundabouts are self-explanatory road devices designed to assist the driver to avoid mishaps. But then, you would think that. It has to be conceded, this roundabout is narrow. The landscaped omphalos and impressive eucalypt that dignify the centre of the intersection are a teensy bit too big. The camber at the edge of the roundabout is perhaps too high for some vehicles. Buses may charge across the roundabout with a heffalump bump, while your Mercedes Benz must negotiate the bends mercurially, and your bull-bar brute treats the roundabout as an obstacle impeding its progress, to be conquered by force rather than treated with respect. To which arises the question of what kind of vehicle cuts corners and takes down a road sign in one fell acceleration? A fairly heavy duty one. One that plans to get from A to B in a straight line that hasn’t time for crescents and roundabouts. There must a few of these vehicles on the job because they keep the nature strips at these round corners grass-free, a compound of beaten earth that develops long puddles at the first sign of rain. Eventually the men from Banyule or the Roads come to straighten the sign, or mend the guard, or fix the overhead wires, or trim the impressive eucalypt. Eventually is on average about five days.