I have been driving the commute between Belgrade and Bozeman since 1991, and I have come to a firm conclusion. If you are entering a roundabout and there is nobody currently inside it, you do not need to come to a complete, full-stop halt.

I see this every morning at the new junctions near the highway. People treat these circles like a four-way stop at a funeral procession. They look left, they look right, they look at the dashboard, they check their mirrors, and then they sit there while the intersection remains entirely empty.

It is designed to keep traffic moving, not to provide a moment for quiet meditation.

I spoke with Miller “Diesel” Higgins, who drives a lifted truck and works in commercial construction. He told me, “Gerald, I just assume everyone in town is secretly practicing for their driver’s license test. You go to the Co-op, you go to the gas station, and everyone is moving at the speed of a grazing elk. It’s like nobody wants to actually get anywhere.”

I tend to agree with Miller, though I find his light bar distracting at night. The point of a roundabout is flow. If you stop when no one is coming, you are essentially causing the very traffic jam you are afraid of being stuck in.

Some folks tell me they are just being “courteous.” They think that by stopping, they are letting the other drivers have the right of way. But if you have the space to enter, you are actually being rude by stalling the line of fifty cars behind you. It creates a ripple effect of braking that goes all the way back to the frontage road.

We have built these expensive, modern circular intersections because we are growing, and we want to be a modern city. Yet, we still drive like we are pulling a horse trailer through a narrow mountain pass in 1975. You don’t have to wait for the road to be clear of ghosts. You just have to look for actual cars.

If we don’t start utilizing these intersections with a bit more gumption, we might as well just install traffic lights and go back to sitting at red ones for three minutes at a time. I don’t want to go back to that. I just want to get to the hardware store without contemplating the meaning of patience at every single junction.

It is a simple geometric shape, not a philosophical inquiry. Just keep moving, and we will all get home in time for dinner.

Gerald Fencepost has lived in Belgrade since 1991 and has strong feelings about most intersections.