By Ann Marie Shambaugh
Kevin Patterson and Garrett Brooks are both young businessmen who love living in Carmel. They recently decided to pay homage to their city by exploring one of its best-known features: driving around 91 roundabouts in a single morning.
The friends mapped out a route starting in the southwest corner of Carmel and circled their way across the city, completing the final roundabout at 96th Street at Shelborne Road near where they began.
“(We still) loved the roundabouts at the end,” Brooks said. “We were very carsick from driving in that many circles though.”
Patterson and Brooks traveled roundabouts of all types, including some suited for pedestrians in the Village of West Clay where they traveled by hover board and others that seemed to lead to nowhere.
“When we started looking for one of them in particular it got tricky,” Patterson said. “When we finally found it tucked away north off of 96th Street just beyond the Hyundai dealership, it was so funny because it didn’t lead to anything in particular, but it was still a roundabout.”
Patterson, an insurance agent, moved to Carmel about two years ago, and Brooks, a real estate agent, grew up in the area. Both said they are fans of roundabouts for a variety of reasons.
“Why we admire roundabouts – aside from the beauty that they bring to this community as well as fuel efficiency – is their safety. They keep traffic flowing,” Patterson said. “It’s been proven that roads are safer when traffic is free-flowing.”
Their feelings about the intersections didn’t change after a morning spent navigating them.
“It really just solidified our opinion of roundabouts,” Brooks said. “We drove for hours back and forth through a city with very little stops.”
