Road design, safety and Vision Zero

[danbrotherston]

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.

This is definitely true, the sharks teeth are in the wrong place...but I think there are a few reasons for this.

The biggest and most relevant one is the more aggressive dangerous relationship between drivers and everyone else.

Here, when I am approaching a crossing and a car pulls up to it...and stops RIGHT in front of it, I feel no trepidation about the driver not stopping. They are traveling all of 20km/h and usually in a much smaller car, in a much narrower lane. It just feels safer.

Where as in Canada, if that driver doesn't stop a good 10 yards back, you better believe they're getting a dirty look, and no way in hell am I getting near them before they stop, because I'm a good 5 meters from the next curb, and they're traveling 40-50km/h in a 2 tonne pickup truck two inches over my head....

So yeah, the context definitely matters.

But I do believe that engineering is as big or bigger an issue. Driver attitude and behaviour (and vehicle selection) is a huge problem, but if you put a Dutch driver in a Canadian roundabout, they are going to behave similarly to a Canadian driver, IMO.  The reverse might be harder to achieve, but I still thing engineering is the key.