My county has been putting up more stop lights lately.

@SinlessOnslaught Horrible? Well, yes as a motorist I agree they would be annoying! Actually the more inconvenient types of traffic lights we have are not the regular ones but temporary ones guarding road-works. They are often badly set, creating unfair priorities and needless delays.

@ArishMell Yeah those are permanent here.

@SinlessOnslaught Permant road repairs then? :-)

@jehova They are.

I gather the British equivalent of a "traffic circle" is a one-way system in streets surrounding a block of buildings, but we also have many of what we call "roundabouts" - the circular thing in a single junction, albeit with various numbers of outlets.

Unfortunately we also suffer from road-planning theoreticians with Honours Degrees in Complication; who love to make what should be a simple roundabout into a confusing mess, or as in my town, replacing a simple, effective roundabout with a vast area of asphalt, confusing lane markings and ambiguous traffic-lights!

A housing-estate on the fringe of the town of Swindon has one famous, or rather infamous, junction so pointlessly baffling that it became known even among people who had never driven there, as the "Magic Roundabout" - the title of a children's strange puppet show on TV at the time (early-1970s). I have seen it, once, and seem to recall it has five roads meeting at a main central roundabout surrounded by five "mini-roundabouts", like a model of a solar-system.

@ArishMell yes roundabouts are traffic circles it’s supposed to be simple one lane with multiple entrances and exits

@jehova Thankyou. I recall someone else on this site once explaining to me a US difference between a roundabout and traffic circle.

A small roundabout on minor roads can effectively be of one lane but on major roads the UK ones can have two or three lanes to allow vehicles turning right (left in right-hand lane countries) to go parallel with those using the first exit.

They can be confusing though. I don't use one particular route outbound in my area because it is entered by a dual carriageway and has four exits at odd angles, with poor sight-line. You really need work out which lane to use - in heavy traffic the markings painted on the road are hidden by other vehicles. Coming home that way it gives an easy left turn, though.

The roundabout, named after the common British name for fairground rides, was invented in Britain I think in the 1930s; and soon spread. At first they were the scene of many accidents until someone had the bright idea of directional priority. Used to driving on the left, I found when driving abroad I really had to concentrate on looking left when entering a roundabout!

I think the UK's most famous example of sheer complexity must be "Spaghetti Junction" - but it is not a roundabout. It is a junction of two ordinary roads and the M6 motorway on the edge of Birmingham, and in plan is a bewildering tangle of curves and bridges! It might be fairly easy to negotiate if you concentrate on the signs as well as traffic - but it is very well nick-named.