Learning to yield

By Neil B. Armstrong

The roundabout or traffic island comprises a significant and fearful element of the English driving test. But I’d never realized the extent to which it is a mini tutorial in behaviorism until, that is, Changwon city authorities built a couple of small ones in Masan. I don’t mean to exaggerate and nor do I think I’m speaking out of turn when I say that our new traffic islands are sowing confusion in the minds of men.

This pair of roundabouts is not the first. There is a traffic island in Changwon so big that I’ve seen kite flyers, games of football, and non-ironic picnics grace its huge lawn. Being on it, for sure, is much more of a carefree and longevity-inducing experience than having to drive round it. Negotiating its eight-lane turnoffs is as straight forward as negotiating a refund from a vending machine.

But it has lights. There are mechanical and automated directives governing its rules. Follow them and, six times out of 10, you will get to where you want to go. Masan’s new mini roundabouts, scandalously, require full and independent application of an alert human consciousness. There are no machines to help. Nor is there a sign reading “Give Way to Traffic from the Left,” and herein lies our traffic islands’ defining oversight.

Such a sign would instantly iron out the problem we are now having: drivers approaching the island from any direction who believe they have an immediate right of entrance. They barrel onto the road around the island as if it is an aligned continuation of their path, with no need for pause or thought or caution in the face of engine-based metal weapons.

In order to accommodate these new vehicles, drivers already in the middle of their short stay on the island road are obliged to stop. Stopping halfway around a traffic island feels untimely and demeaning, like being asked to leave the public sauna halfway through shampooing your hair to allow unclean newcomers to begin their wash.

Does this confusion have its roots in the construction phase? The building of the island occurred, as is usual with all local road works, with full uninterrupted use of the road permitted. So there was at least one day, the day on which the transition to a roundabout system was completed, on which drivers had the junction option of red-amber-green lights or a traffic island, providing a live demonstration of competing traffic management systems and some terrific footage for YouTube.

The next day, construction workers interceded to usher in the new island era. Drivers were now invited to follow the circular arm motions of a road worker who himself was unsure whom to beckon as priority. He was waving that orange striped baton around as if a new genus of locusts wanted his helmet for a nest.

And, in his panic, he forgot to leave us that Give Way sign. I have been in numerous vehicles driven by local people who describe the peculiar sense that, hey, shouldn’t we wait before circling the roundabout, as they nevertheless dangerously plough straight onto the island road. Their intuition is correct; what they do based on accumulated habit is not.

An interesting contrast is to be found with a nearby mountain course. A one-person-wide decked step path was installed to assist with the fierce initial incline required to reach the mountain road. Wonderful. But what entailed was a mini war of nerves over right of way between the person coming down and the person coming up, a battle which started 100 steps in advance as man going up and man going down came into each other’s view.

But the nighttime sign elves did their fairy tale work and a notice magically appeared saying, “Descending person is to yield.” And, generally speaking, they do. As a result, the average citizen’s stress odometer has wound back a few clicks, an effect it would be wise to repeat on the roads. So all we need now is that sign telling us to wait and give way.

We need City Hall to confirm the universal law that the approaching entity yields path.

The writer is the author of Korean Straight Lines. He can be contacted at prelim@prelimhouse.com.