If waiting at red lights gets you agitated you may be happy to hear that safety experts are on your side, sort of. Many of them are promoting traffic roundabouts as alternatives to intersections with traffic lights.

To some drivers, the best thing about roundabouts is that traffic generally keeps moving while going through them, so no red lights. Traffic safety groups including the Federal Highway Administration, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and several state departments of transportation like the circular intersections because they are safer than traditional ones in which lines of traffic have to cross each other.

According to federal highway data, the frequency of crashes at intersections tends to correspond with the number of conflict points, or places where the paths of two vehicles cross. Roundabouts largely take away the conflicts by channeling vehicles into the same direction at similar speeds. They also help vehicles travel more efficiently, saving time and fuel.

Safety advocates like modern roundabouts because although they keep traffic moving, their tight turns force cars to slow down. In this way they differ from the larger, higher-speed traffic circles and rotaries that some of us grew up with in the U.S. Many of those were removed over time and replaced with traditional traffic-light intersections in part because increasing driving speeds made the circles difficult for some to navigate.

The Insurance Institute says modern roundabouts were developed in the United Kingdom in the 1960s. The first in the U.S. were built in Nevada around 1990 and it is estimated that more than 2,000 have been built since then. For comparison, France has about 20,000 roundabouts and the U.K. has about 15,000. The number here is likely to continue growing because several states have programs to promote the use of roundabouts where roads are being built or re-engineered.