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Whether you call them roundabouts or traffic circles, this increasingly popular feature on American roadways can have some drivers spinning.

But while roundabouts are considered safer than traditional intersections for vehicle traffic, how safe are they for pedestrians?

Pedestrian safety

That was one of the topics that ����ֱ�� State University College of Public Health Associate Professor Sheryl Chatfield, Ph.D., posed to the students in her Public Health Research course as a potential topic for their semester project in the fall of 2024.

With two new roundabouts on the ����ֱ�� Campus on Summit Street in the last 10 years, another one currently under construction on East Main Street and a fourth one planned on Main, Chatfield thought the subject matter was pertinent and her students agreed.

“The topic of pedestrian safety with roundabouts was one of the many suggestions I gave, and it was one of the most popular choices we had,” Chatfield told ����ֱ�� State Today.

Learning to research

With the assistance of the class spent the 2024 Fall Semester not just researching the topic but learning how to research in the process.

Slack said part of her job is collaborating with professors in the health sciences who are teaching courses that involve students learning best practices for research while they are conducting it.

“We want for them to be able to differentiate between the types of research designs, such as qualitative or quantitative,” she said.

Research results

What the class found was that most research on the safety success of roundabouts is for drivers, but little exists examining whether they are a safer choice for pedestrians.

“It’s not as clear-cut as people tend to think,” Chatfield said.

Much of the research on pedestrian safety is either dated or based on European models, where roundabouts have been popular in road design for many decades. Some of the success, the research shows, depends on the location of the roundabout and its design.

Little research exists that tracks the number of “near-misses” for vehicles in roundabouts and even less when it comes to pedestrian near misses, Chatfield said.

“There are profound challenges for people with visual impairments,” she said, “Because there is a lot of reliance on eye contact with drivers, and with the number of electric vehicles and hybrids, the sound of vehicles is not as consistent as it used to be. Roundabouts can present a lot more challenges if they don’t have some kind of formal crossing, with a button to push for pedestrians.”

For now, Chatfield said, the driving force behind the push toward more roundabouts “seems to be improving the experience for drivers, and not so much improving the experience for non-motorized operators, for pedestrians and bicycles and the like.”

“As a pedestrian, if nine times out of 10, I almost get hit, that’s not good, but that’s also something nobody knows,” she said. “I hate to say more research is needed, but more research is needed.”

Research gains attention

When the 2024 Fall Semester was over, Chatfield felt the research was worth continuing and asked if any students were interested in sticking with the project.

“I felt like it was a solid enough project that it could be presented in an undergraduate research symposium at ����ֱ�� State,” she said.

Two students, seniors Ramah Kassis and Falasha Mahadevia, agreed to continue the task throughout the 2025 Spring Semester.

Chatfield encouraged them to enter the student competition at the Ohio Public Health Association’s annual conference in Columbus in the spring of 2025, where they took top honors.

“They won both the Student Poster Award and the People’s Choice Award at that conference,” she said. “I felt that their success in a state conference, even as a student-focused project, was indicative of the high-quality work they did.”

Kassis and Mahadevia both graduated with bachelor’s degrees in public health in the spring of 2025 and left ����ֱ�� State.

Project continues

A year later, however, the research continues to draw attention.

Chatfield and Slack were invited to present the research at the 2025 Ohio Roundabouts Conference, sponsored by the Ohio Department of Transportation in Delaware, Ohio, on Dec. 10.

With roundabouts popping up all over the state, Chatfield said she thinks the topic resonates with people. “People from all over Ohio are experiencing roundabout development or conversations about roundabouts,” she said.

The conference was an audience of traffic engineers and transportation-related professionals, and organizers praised the academic nature of their research and encouraged them to share follow-ups in the future.

“We’re on our third semester,” Slack said, “I don’t know if it’s ever going to stop. I guess we’re in the roundabout now and we just keep going.”