Brighton — Located just south of Brighton off U.S. Highway 23, the Lee Road roundabouts are like pineapple on pizza, cats, and Adam Sandler movies: You either love ‘em or hate ‘em, but everyone has an opinion.
The roundabouts opened on Aug. 30, 2006, and, in the 19 years since, have spawned letters to the editor, Facebook posts, and—of course—crashes.
There are three roundabouts at the Lee Road intersection—one on the east side of U.S. 23 and two on the west side—but it’s the double roundabout on the west side that stands out.
While there are roundabouts all over Michigan, this bad boy is unique. When it was built in 2006, it was billed as the first double roundabout in North America. I’m certain tour buses from all over the country came to Brighton to hopefully witness a double-roundabout-induced, low-speed crash.
The Lee Road intersection used to be a sleepy little stop off U.S. 23, but in 2006, some major commercial developments appeared. Green Oak Village Place Mall opened on the east side and Costco and Kohl’s opened on the west side. The government people who were in charge back then decided that instead of just putting in boring, old stoplights, they would put in as many roundabouts as they could.
The Sept. 10, 2006, issue of the Livingston County Daily Press & Argus carried this letter from Kevin Faulkner of Pinckney: “To the planners of Brighton who have made these terrible decisions lately: If you want Brighton to be more European, move to Europe.”
A few days earlier, on Sept. 1, Norv and Shari Schock of Brighton wrote, “We think it is an awesome job of engineering and our compliments to those responsible for solving some real traffic backups in that area.”
When letters to the editor became a thing of the past, Facebook filled the void. Just this week, on the “Brighton MI Happenings” Facebook group, I asked the locals to vote on whether they loved or hated the roundabouts. After about 10 hours, 384 people had voted in the poll and 42% said they loved them, 22% said they hated them, and the rest had different answers.
As a Livingston County resident myself, I’m firmly in the hate ‘em camp. I don’t think driving through an intersection should be that complicated. Your head needs to be on a swivel when you’re driving through them, and you must rely on all the other drivers to be just as alert and smart as you are.
The statistics, meanwhile, back me up. The double roundabout is a crash magnet. According to the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments, statistics for the total number of crashes from 2019 to 2023 found that the Lee Road intersection was the seventh-worst intersection for crashes in all of Wayne, Oakland, Macomb, Washtenaw, and Livingston counties. No other intersection in Livingston County was in the top 100.
During those five years, there were an average of 67.2 crashes every year at that site. That’s one crash every 5.4 days. In 2021 alone, there were 82 crashes.
The good news is that most of those crashes weren’t too bad. Cars aren’t going very fast as they’re swerving through the roundabouts, so there aren’t many injuries or fatalities. Still, when it’s the only Livingston County intersection among the top 100 crash sites in all of Southeast Michigan, that’s a sign that something’s wrong.
It would seem that as we approach the 20th anniversary of the first double roundabout in North America, we’re no closer to reaching a community consensus.
I’ve heard a billion or so stories about the roundabouts since they opened, but my favorite one happened in December 2006, just a few months in. Author Mitch Albom was on his way to do a book signing at the local Barnes & Noble store, and, because he’s Mitch Albom, he had a driver.
But when his driver tried to navigate the double roundabout, he couldn’t figure out how in the hell to get to the bookstore. According to the story we ran in the paper: “His driver got flummoxed by the roundabouts and ended up back on U.S. 23. After calling store officials and getting further directions, the car somehow ended up back on Interstate 96.”
If Mitch Albom and his driver can’t navigate the roundabouts, what chance do we mere mortals have?
Buddy Moorehouse teaches documentary filmmaking at Hillsdale College.
