Road design, safety and Vision Zero

[Bytor]

But the difference between them could not be more stark.

So let's look at these two roundabouts with a reasonable eye, eh?

For vehicles, they enter and leave the same way. They come up to the round about, have shark's teeth telling them to yield, and then they enter. The difference is that the Ira Needles one is a bit like a small Dutch turbo-roundabout done with paint instead of curbs.

For pedestrians, the crosswalks on ours are as far back from the roundabout as they are from the Dutch ones. It merely seems like our pedestrian crossings are further because there's no cycle path between the sidewalk and the vehicle roundabout. Notably, our shark's teeth to yield for pedestrians are set back much farther than the Dutch ones, providing that space for a car or two to stop and wait for pedestrians without backing up the roundabout, just like you mentioned Twitter.

Functionally they are pretty much the same, especially with respect to pedestrians. While our roundabouts could be tweaked, driver attitude and aggressiveness is a far bigger problem than roundabout engineering.