Two more rings and I’d have thought I was in an Olympic event.

I drove through Blue Earth on my way to see relatives in Iowa.

I went through three roundabouts in Blue Earth. Three rings. The symbol of the Olympics has five rings.

If I put on many miles in a day, it’s rare that I don’t spend some time in a roundabout. A roundabout is a road junction in which traffic streams circulate in a single direction around a central island.

A reader told me that I should write a column about roundabouts. I said that I had in 2014.

“Then it’s about time you wrote another one,” he said with a smile. He called the three roundabouts a three-ring circus and hoped, not secretly, that while the inventor of roundabouts served a life imprisonment, all his teeth fell out except the one with the excruciating toothache.

His companion laughed and said that his pal flew off the handle like a dollar store hammer.

You’ve read about the benefits of roundabouts. They are efficient. They reduce right-angle (T-bone) crashes, reducing fatal injuries. Roundabouts replace traffic lights and stop signs, lessening delay and the decreased idling reduces fuel consumption.

I like roundabouts. Not everyone does. Some people call them traffic circles or rotaries or &#%*@?¥!. The definitions of those terms may vary according to region.

They are foreign when first experienced. A cloak of uncertainty surrounds most new things.

I remember being puzzled when I first encountered algebra in school. Algebra was like that baseball. I wondered why the ball was getting bigger and bigger — and then it hit me. I try not to do any algebra while driving. I don’t derive while driving, but roundabouts are like algebra. We figure them out. I hope that realization hits you before another car does.

In the 1985 movie, “European Vacation,” Clark Griswold (played by Chevy Chase), drove an English rental car carrying his family into the inner lane of a multi-lane roundabout with heavy traffic near London’s Lambeth Bridge. Clark proclaimed, “Look, kids, there’s Big Ben and Parliament!” Unable to maneuver into the exit lane, he became trapped in the circle. What goes around comes around —repeatedly. Clark’s announcement changed to, “Hey, look, kids, there’s Big Ben and Parliament — again.”

When I was a teenager, a friend, let’s call him Steve, drove his car home in reverse in order to take miles off the odometer. His father was one of those who checked the odometer of the family car after it had been used by one of his children. My buddy was good at driving backwards, maybe better than he was at driving forward. To use another movie reference, in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” Ferris had a classmate whose father was an odometer reader. Ferris removed the extra miles by running the car in reverse. He jacked up the rear end so that the wheels weren’t touching the floor and placed a cement block on the gas pedal. It might have worked had it not been part of a movie.

A roundabout doesn’t dismiss miles from an odometer, but it’s a better idea than driving home in reverse gear. What are the secrets to driving in a roundabout other than finding a route that doesn’t include any, driving an army surplus tank or equipping your car with bumpers the size of Idaho? Here are some helpful hints.

• Always yield to pedestrians, even if it’s someone you don’t like.

• Realize that cars in a roundabout have the right-of-way.

• Use your blinker. Turn signals let that idiot/moron (probably on his father’s side) behind you know what you’re up to. It gives those entering or exiting a roundabout a clue as to your intentions. Even if you aren’t in a roundabout, it’s a good idea to signal your turns. It gives those who work in the turn signal department of an automobile factory some job satisfaction. Steve, the backwards driver, may have done things wrong, but he signaled his turns. Sometimes, I think that the only drivers who use turn signals are visitors to an area. That’s because the locals know where everyone else is going to turn.

• When you enter a roundabout, watch for Steve driving in reverse.

As I traversed the roundabout triplets, I felt like the lord of the rings.

The Griswolds were able to see Big Ben and Parliament — often — and they escaped the roundabout eventually.

Of course, they exited even dizzier.

If you want to get out of a three-ring circus, use a blinker.

 

Al Batt’s columns appear in the Tribune every Wednesday and Sunday.