One of the mysteries of my dumb-lucky life is why more neighborhoods aren’t as fortunate as mine.

Not one stoplight — or even a stop sign — distorts the drive through our commercial zone.

For going on seven years, Bird Rock has performed in a San Diego pilot that, in my view anyway, could not be more sublimely successful.

In a form of asphalt alchemy, five major roundabouts — and several smaller ones — have turned lead-footed lights into gold.


What was once a four-lane, stop-and-start speedway is now the calmest, cleanest and prettiest stretch of commercial road in San Diego County.

About 22,000 vehicles daily pass through Bird Rock, an eclectic enclave between downtown La Jolla and Pacific Beach.

But here’s the thing. Vehicles drive much slower than before, but on average they get through faster.

A couple of years ago, the MythBusters team on the Discovery Channel conducted a real-world test and found roundabouts 20 percent more efficient than four-way stops.


The roundabout paradox — slower driving, faster travel — is demonstrated nonstop in Bird Rock.

Chuck Patton, owner of the hyper-popular Bird Rock Coffee Roasters, has a bird’s-eye view of how his now two-lane southern stretch of La Jolla Boulevard has been transformed.

To Patton, whose business predates the roundabouts by a year or two, the aesthetic enhancement is one thing — the landscaping is gorgeous — but positive change can also be measured in decibels and soot.

In the old stoplight days, vehicles would gun their motors as they tried to make a changing light, he tells me. Exhaust would billow into his shop distinguished by open floor-to-ceiling windows.


“Industrial fallout,” Patton calls noise and pollution.

What’s more, serious accidents are a thing of the distant past.

It’s partly physics. Cars enter roundabouts at an angle, making serious accidents virtually impossible.

But it’s also partly psychology. Roundabouts require full driver attention, bringing out the best in people as they yield to other cars. And because they’re driving slower, actually look at their surroundings, including the shops. You cannot text and negotiate a roundabout.


What’s most enjoyable about roundabouts, I find, is the seamless dance — the roundelay? — as cars enter and leave the circles. Courteous eye contact with a driver, pedestrian or bicyclist is built into a roundabout.

Go ahead, sir. Thank you, ma’am.

What appears to be the safest driving condition — stoplights everywhere — is in fact the most dangerous because it brings out the two worst traits in urban drivers: Numbed inattention and occasional aggression.

As it happens, we’re getting to the end of “National Stop on Red Week,” an annual event sponsored by the Federal Highway Administration to highlight the evils of running red lights.


In 2013, nearly 700 people were killed in stoplight-related accidents, the FHA reports. An estimated 127,000 were injured.

If roundabouts, natural tranquilizers of road rage, are safer, more efficient and infinitely more beautiful, what’s the problem? Why aren’t they as ubiquitous in the U.S. as in Europe?

Why do we see them as exotic stand-alones, like the lovely specimen on Highway 101 at the border of Carlsbad and Oceanside? Why hasn’t the integrated Bird Rock model been replicated?

Well, it takes a village to raze stoplights — and raise roundabouts. Tearing out lights is expensive and disruptive. Businesses living month to month may revolt. Federal grants may be required; local assessments (i.e., taxes), too. And you’ll always have hidebound old folks who resist change.


After all, stoplights have civilized anarchic streets for what seems forever.

If you were one of the roughly 700 million people worldwide who visited Google Wednesday, you were no doubt amused by an adorable Doodle depicting Model-T era vehicles speeding through an intersection when the two-color stoplight was green and screeching to a halt when the light turned red.

The witty caricature honored the nation’s first electric stoplight, installed to combat road anarchy in Cleveland 101 years ago on Wednesday.

Of course, stoplights soon became automated. (In 1914, a policeman sat in a booth, changing the colors.) Yellow got thrown into the mix.


There’s no getting around stoplights, it seems. (Every time we get new brake pads, we’re reminded.)

When I was growing up in Coronado, pre-PBDB (Pat Brown’s Damned Bridge), no stoplights controlled traffic on Orange Avenue.

With the influx of bridge traffic, look at the Island.

How cool would it have been if the city had built roundabouts the length of Orange. It would have been known far and wide as the Roundabout Island.


I guess I should be thankful my new hometown is so lucky.

I just wish others were.

logan.jenkins@sduniontribune.com