alt Hacker News> The problem is that at intersections the normative behavior of American drivers is to queue and wait for your turn. Roundabouts assume a different behavior based on jumping the line.
I don't think it's that different from turning right on red, or left without an arrow, or even merging on to the highway from an onramp (maybe that's the most similar, traffic in the others aren't flowing the same direction as you).
There is a roundabout near me that gets quite low traffic volume. I probably only have to even slow below 20mph about 10% of the time. The bigger risk is that the car in front of me is going to come to a complete stop at the yield sign despite the fact that you can see any potential conflicts at least 100 feet before the roundabout.
American drivers don’t know that a yield doesn’t require a stop and can’t think more than one or two seconds ahead of any possible conflict in traffic.