I would like to shake the hand or hands of the people responsible for coming up with a brilliant idea to help slow down traffic.

We're talking about roundabouts. Where were these so called roundabouts when I was going to high school back in the mid '70s?

These really cool roundabouts are meant to slow traffic down and to improve safety for not only motorists, but for pedestrians as well.

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I've already driven through several roundabouts in the Greater Lansing area. In fact, one of them is located in Okemos at Hamilton and Marsh roads. I should know, I drive through it every single day.

Did you hear that three new roundabouts are coming to several locations in Kalamazoo County?

So what's the main purpose of these roundabouts and why are more of them being built?

Courtesy of mlive.com:

Roundabouts are designed to improve safety for motorists and pedestrians, reduce delay, reduce speeding and improve efficiency for the motoring public. The road commission submitted for and was approved federal and state safety dollars for the intersection improvements.

I will take these roundabouts any day compared to speed bumps, which can cause serious vehicle damage if you don't use extreme caution.

Once these new Kalamazoo roundabouts are built, traffic will operate much more smoothly.

What I really like about these roundabouts is you don't have to treat them like a four way stop. Of course you have to yield to traffic, but once that happens, you're on your way to your destination.

As it stands, the road commission has funding for all three Kalamazoo roundabouts, it's just a matter of time.

LOOK: See how much gasoline cost the year you started driving

To find out more about how has the price of gas changed throughout the years, Stacker ran the numbers on the cost of a gallon of gasoline for each of the last 84 years. Using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (released in April 2020), we analyzed the average price for a gallon of unleaded regular gasoline from 1976 to 2020 along with the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for unleaded regular gasoline from 1937 to 1976, including the absolute and inflation-adjusted prices for each year.

Read on to explore the cost of gas over time and rediscover just how much a gallon was when you first started driving.

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