Part way through today's ride it occurred to me that we had encountered only one traffic light all day and yet we had dozens of intersections that we had successfully navigated. To me, it was a good example of good road design. I observed that most intersections between multiple intersections were handled by traffic circles or also known as roundabouts, which meant that as bicyclist we simply merged with other traffic and exited the circle as needed with no fuss, no muss. it really works very nicely.
At home in Los Angeles, California, traffic circles are rare and as a consequence are confusing to many motorists and cyclists when traffic circles are encountered.
I have been collecting many videos on how the Netherlands have designed their roads to improve the safety of both cars and bicycles (click here). In a nutshell, if you design the roads correctly, the need for traffic lights, speed limit signs and stop signs are largely unnecessary. Also proper road design reduces or eliminates that time spent at traffic light and stop signs. All very good attributes in reducing time and wasted gas. The roads here in France shares many of the attributes of roads found in the Netherlands and should be implemented in the United States, resulting in safer streets for cyclist, motorist and pedestrians.
I was sceptical of this type of road design and now have seen it successfully implemented in many countries such as Netherlands, France, Spain and Italy.
Today's ride ended in Pont-Aven. A wonderful seaside town that we will be able to explore more thoroughly tomorrow as we will be spending two nights here. I'll have more details tomorrow, but I'll leave you with this beautiful photo of a tidal inlet where the boats were floating and just a couple of hours later all the boats were sitting on mud flats as the tide had gone out. Not at all uncommon in this area.
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