There was news this week that the city of Palm Springs strongly considered taking out stoplights and putting in a roundabout at the intersection of Camino Parocela and Palm Canyon and Indian Canyon drives. Unfortunately, due to what the city says were some property issues that would come with widening the lanes, the plan didn’t work out. But, props to the city of Palm Springs (one of the rare times I can actually type that) for taking a break from being the fun police and trying to do something for traffic that would’ve worked great.

You see, roundabouts are awesome. And for many reasons. A study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety found that roundabouts reduced injury crashes by 75 percent at intersections where stop signs or signals were previously used for traffic control. There was also:

• A 37 percent reduction in overall collisions
• A 75 percent reduction in injury collisions
• A 90 percent reduction in fatality collisions
• A 40 percent reduction in pedestrian collisions

Those all seem way better right?  Yes.  Yes they do. Oh, and none of those stats mention the best part of all: the fact that you won’t have to sit, stopped at an empty intersection for five minutes just because the dumb red light can’t sense that there is no one else around for miles.

Now sure, the elders in town have had issues with roundabouts and, in the case of La Quinta, the city caved to their inability to adapt, all while spending a ton of unnecessary cash..

It’s too bad Palm Springs couldn’t figure out a way to make the downtown roundabout happen.  If only it was a scandal-plagued hotel.