The troublesome roundabout where Glenwood Avenue intersects with Jean Duluth Road. Photo by John Gilbert.

As one of our favorite time-saving shortcuts as my wife, Joan, goes to work arranging physical training for assisted-living folks in the Mount Royal area of Duluth, the appearance of a roundabout where Glenwood Avenue intersects with Jean Duluth Road is an intriguing challenge.

Entering, using, and exiting from a roundabout is a simple exercise that requires only a tiny amount of care and appreciating the fact that you are sharing the road with others. Someone recently wrote an article explaining the simple methods for safely driving through a roundabout, but unfortunately the article assumed that all drivers are courteous and treat their fellow-drivers with care and hospitality.

I have driven on well-planned and well-executed roundabouts in various cities, including some impressive ones near Barcelona in Spain. The whole concept makes sense, because you drive up to the circular area, with only a few rules awaiting you: You enter after carefully checking approaching traffic from your left, and if there is some, you yield; if there isn’t any, you seize the right-of-way and trace the circle counter-clockwise.

Once you’re going around the circle, you look ahead at the several arteries that are exiting into your roundabout circle, and   you maintain a steady speed as you make it past two or three entering arteries, then you signal and exit to your right onto your chosen exit route. Smooth as silk, you’ve made it onto, around, and off the roundabout and head on your merry way.

There is a problem with my particular favorite Duluth roundabout, and whenever my wife, Joan, drives up Glenwood, or whenever I drive her on that route, we both have noted that every single time we go through it, we nearly become victims of impatient, overly aggressive roundabouters.

Here’s the scenario, repeated almost every time: I drive up Glenwood, slowing down as I approach the roundabout. I look to my left, and notice the almost constant flow coming north on Snively Boulevard — which becomes the Jean Duluth Road after getting past the roundabout — makes the first right turn to head toward Lakeside on Glenwood. When I see the cars turning whether they signal or not, I advance into the roundabout’s circle. My path is to trace the circle counter-clockwise, not turning right onto Jean Duluth, and not taking the second right to continue into the residential area as Glenwood continues, but I signal to exit on the third right exit to head down Snively toward Woodland Avenue, Joan’s workplace, and the UMD campus.

But our problem is that virtually every time we enter the roundabout, a fast-moving car, pickup or SUV coming from our right barges right into the roundabout without so much as a glance at us. We have not been hit, but we have had a dozen or more close calls, where we have to hit the brakes abruptly to avoid these hurtling interlopers. Often, I honk the horn, which does not provoke the approaching driver to even glance our way. They continue, normally exiting the onto the same route we are planning to take.

One time the offending vehicle was a work van from a construction company, and it had an advertising phone number on it. I asked Joan to copy it down, and I called their shop, explaining what had happened and the close call they had caused. A very nice woman apologized and said she would explain it to the supervisor on duty and thanked me for alerting them.

Returning in the afternoon onto the same roundabout from the south, there really isn’t much of a problem, because we, and most other drivers heading north on Snively, take the first exit to the right and travel down Glenwood without incident from arriving cars on Glenwood.

The problem isn’t just roundabouts, but a complete lack of showing respect for other drivers. Duluth is quite notorious for this, and a casual morning rush-hour drive west-bound on London Road will prove this, day after day. As you drive in the normal flow of traffic, maybe at 30 miles per hour — the posted speed limit — whenever you leave so much as a car-length gap, you will be wise to look ahead and see the SUV or pickup truck coming down any of the avenues and approaching the stop sign for London Road. However, instead of stopping, those drivers will simply power through the stop sign and charge into the gap you’ve left in the name of caution.

Whenever you see a vehicle approaching the slowdown area of a stop sign at London Road, be doubly alert, because in the vast majority of times, that driver of that vehicle will simply ignore the stop sign and blast through into a tiny gap on London Road’s traffic flow.

My guess is that the same degree of rude driving behavior that provokes these drivers to run stop signs is about identical to the rude lack of respect they show at a roundabout.

Our issues with roundabouts go back to the planning stage, where traffic planners simply plunked down a roundabout without any idea of training drivers on how to enter and exit them. Going back up to our Glenwood/Jean Duluth roundabout, neither my wife, Joan, nor I have ever seen a city or highway patrol car in the vicinity. If one was parked there, with an officer observing the techniques of the drivers, my guess is that the constant flow of roundabout runners would be immediately curtailed.

Each day, when I ask Joan if she had any close calls at Glenwood-Jean Duluth, she automatically says, “Yes.” If I’ve driven her to work that day, I always notify her if I’ve had to abruptly stop or swerve to avoid an accident.

The idea of rude driving behavior is also pretty constant on the freeway stretch coming in from the East to the Lester River region, when the speed limit drops quickly from 65 mph to 40 and then 30. As you cruise along at 65 mph, you may detect a following car coming from behind at a high rate of speed. Sometimes I edge my speed up a bit, other times I just hold my pace. More often than not, the following car will accelerate until it forces its way past you at, perhaps, 75 or 80 mph, then veering in front of you for the decreased speed ahead, or to swerve to the right, cutting you off before making a hasty exit at Superior Street.

Those specific areas — Hwy. 60 as it compresses from four lanes to two; London Road where very few vehicles obey the stop sign before barging ahead of you into a small gap in traffic flow; or our new favorite, which is violating common sense and common decency before claiming the right-of-way at the roundabout at Glenwood Av. and Jean Duluth Road.

If we all decided to care just a little, our driving road rage could be greatly reduced or eliminated.