To the Editor:
After reading a long front page article in Town Topics about how a roundabout is different from a traffic circle [“Navigating Roundabout on Rosedale Road Has Caused Some Confusion,” November 2], I would like to say your journalist is missing the point, speaking as a rider who narrowly escaped being in a fatal accident because someone did NOT see the roundabout. Normally intelligent Princetonians do not need to learn how to navigate a roundabout, they need to see it in time to drive appropriately.

On October 16, I was given a ride home from town to Brookstone Drive by a former Princeton resident in his small sports car. We rounded the circle as proscribed and were barely missed by a car careening over the center of the roundabout. You are lucky you are not getting this letter from my descendants.

Jim Purcell may drive twice a day down Rosedale Road  and “not see any problems,”  but he was not there that day. Regardless of the signs on the side of the road indicating a roundabout ahead, people are coming downhill rarely at 25 or 35 miles an hour, and there is simply a flat white circle ahead. There has to be something that makes that circle visible before you get to it — a circle of lights, plantings, flashing lights — I am sure the engineers can come up with something other than road signs or a blinding overhead light seen when you are almost there. I cannot even imagine what will happen in winter or snow. All my friends say this is a disaster waiting to happen.

When Mr. Xu was killed while crossing on a pedestrian walkway, the county took action. They need to take action now to prevent another tragic accident.

HAZEL STIX
Brookstone Drive