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TIL when a city in Indiana replaced all their signaled intersections with roundabouts, construction costs dropped $125,000, gas savings reached 24k gallons/year per roundabout, injury accidents dropped 80%, and total accidents dropped 40%.

via reddit.com

There are two situations in which traffic lights are superior to roundabouts.

The first is when there is very heavy traffic from one direction, which can prevent cross-traffic from being able to enter the roundabout, and lead to congestion. 

This is easily resolved by adding a signal light to the roundabout, allowing for controlled traffic flow during peak movement, similar to the way some traffic lights at traditional intersections are weight-triggered to prevent people from being stuck there forever.

The second is why roundabouts aren’t a thing in the US even though they’re cheaper, safer, and generally more efficient.

They’re harder to make ticket-traps.

With a standard intersection, because of the different traffic laws in different cities and states, different lengths of yellow lights, etc, it’s really, really easy to ticket people for running a red, and that’s a valuable (as well as predatory and disproportionately affecting poor people) income stream.

In fact, some cities- the biggest one being Chicago– have actually shortened the length of yellow lights to below the length necessary to adhere to the speed limit, to increase ticketing revenues from automated ticket-cameras.