WEST GARDINER, Maine — When transportation engineer Jonathan French attended Cony High School in Augusta some 25 years ago, that venerated seat of learning sat just yards from one of the city’s chaotic and much-hated traffic circles.
But, at the time, French never gave the swirling, car-sized roulette wheel a whole lot of thought.
He certainly never believed he’d someday grow up to design several of the circular traffic interchanges, much less write a children’s book about them, featuring a talking bee and purple, anthropomorphic roundabout with a tuft of green hair.
However, that’s just what he’s done.
French, an engineer with Maine’s Department of Transportation, published “Rhonda Loves Roundabouts,” in April, with the help of a national nonprofit organization called Build the Era.
The organization aims to explain to the general public what the U.S. Department of Transportation does. French helped found the organization.
French is a full-throated roundabout expert and aficionado who touts their superior safety records over traditional all-way, or traffic-signalized, intersections. He believes they get a bad rap because of poor designs in the past, but also because they don’t appear in children’s songs, games, television shows or books.
French hopes his colorful book will be a baby step toward greater roundabout acceptance by future generations.
In his book, illustrated by Liyin Yeo, a roundabout named Rhonda explains — with the help of a bee — why her intersections are so cool, as well as how to use them safely.
We sat down with French for a chat, near the West Gardiner roundabout, which he designed. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
BDN: First of all, is there a difference between a rotary and a roundabout?
French: Yes. A rotary has a large diameter. It’s built for speed, to move high volumes of traffic efficiently. You usually have to weave, or change lanes, to get to the exit you’re looking for. We really stopped designing rotaries back in the 1960s.
BDN: So what’s a roundabout?
French: The main difference is that they’re smaller and slower. With multi-lane roundabouts, you never have to change lanes. If as long as you get in the correct lane, it will shoot you out at the right place without ever having to change lanes.
BDN: The outside, or right, lane is for the first two exits and the inside, or left, lane is for the third one, right?
French: Correct. Roundabouts are the safest design that you can actually build.
BDN: How so?
French: Roundabouts save lives, they really do, because they force people to slow down. They force people to be aware. A 2018 study by the Risk Institute at Ohio State University looked at a bunch of different things for distracted driving, and they found that a roundabout was the single most effective road design that could reduce crashes from distracted driving, and the severity of crashes from distracted driving. In the roundabouts that they studied, they found zero fatal crashes due to distracted driving.
BDN: I guess compared to a traffic signal, or a stop sign, it would be hard to miss a roundabout, blow through it and then T-bone another car.
French: Exactly.
BDN: And you think Rhonda might help inform a new generation of future drivers that not only are roundabouts nothing to fear, they’re actually pretty cool?
French: Yeah, if you really look at all the books and entertainment and stuff for kids, there are no roundabouts. Look back at the traffic signal. We learn about traffic signals before we know how to read. It’s everywhere. Every kid knows green means go and red means stop.
BDN: True. I played Red Light, Green Light on the playground before I could really read.
French: That’s how traffic signals became integrated in our society — and that hasn’t happened yet for roundabouts. So, I was like, all right, well, maybe we could do something on that, in an organized effort.
BDN: So this book was about a year in the making, I understand. You wrote all the rhyming text and Liyin Yeo did the illustrations, based on your descriptions?
French: Yes. She’s an artist from Malaysia, and we did everything over WhatsApp. She was able to do something that’s very hard to do. I consider roundabouts as joyful. But I’m guessing not everybody does. Road safety, also, in general — that’s not necessarily a fun topic. But she took those two things and made them fun and joyful and really attractive for kids and adults.
BDN: This came out in April?
French: Yes. We did an initial run of 60, then another 60 and now, the third printing will be about 100 more.
BDN: That’s impressive for a book about roundabouts.
French: There’s a veterans group in Rockford, Illinois, that plants flowers on a roundabout there, and they said they’d buy all we have. It’s one of the very few veterans memorial roundabouts in the country. They had noticed that there were a bunch of issues, that people were just not using it correctly. They’re having a lot of crash issues and things like that. And people were really getting a negative feeling toward the roundabout.
BDN: And they reckon your book will help?
French: Yeah. It’s miles and miles away — but the book is having an impact. It’s just making roundabouts less confusing, more simple and increasing understanding of all the benefits that come with them.
French’s new book can be ordered online.
