Yeah except you now have high speed traffic going through an intersection where there previously were none.

4 ways are mostly in residential areas, hence the need for 4 ways.

Damned Canadian law-breakers - we should invade. :eek:

Might be a slightly more expensive solution but here in Cambridge (Ontario) they recently put in our first roundabout. No stops, no traffic. Perfect.

Americans in roundabouts? OMG!
Blind mice with their noses taped shut can navigate a maze to the cheese better.

We have a few smaller roundabouts in Colorado. People are so freaking confused.

+1

There is a roundabout near my job. You can tell which people go through it everyday. They are the ones that actually know what to do. When it is just commuters, the thing works really great, no stops, just yields occasionally. However, a few times, I've seen people not familar with it actually come to a complete stop in the middle of the thing and hold up traffic because they were just clueless. These people amaze me, its really not that hard to figure out.

4-way stop signs DO make sense. They are there to slow the traffic down and to discourage driving through the neighbourhood. Same as one-way streets in residential areas, speed bumps and things like that.

The only problem is that nobody ever meant to discourage cycling in the neighbourhoods, but these traffic calming measures to impede cyclists as well. Hence there are occasionally discussions on the municipal level of making bike lanes on one-way streets going the other way, or allowing cyclists to treat the stop signs as the yield signs.

My solution would be to make it a hell of a lot harder to get a DL. Real testing, not ten questions and five minute drive. Using a tiered system would also be a good idea. In the mean time, pick a road for the stop and road for the right of way. If the speeds are to high that is a speed limit issue not a stop sign issue. If the traffic truly needs control then the intersection needs a light.
Roundabouts are great, the problem is the average driver is just to damn dumb to even grasp a simple single merge onto a straight road. Give them a merge into a curve and then a merge out and their tiny, tiny brain just locks up.