Brian Taylor has been an instructor with Bell's Driving School for four years.

"I'm still doing my first career as a musician," said Taylor. "But, this is something I've started relatively recently. But I've enjoyed doing it very much."

One of the things he's come to believe is that roundabouts should be part of the curriculum for new drivers.

"They're not part of the road test," said Taylor. "They should be. But we're our current road test locations are they could not conveniently take a student to a road to a roundabout. But what we do is we make sure that students get some exposure to that. I always make sure a student goes through a roundabout, you know, once or twice during the course of a set of lessons so that they have some familiarity with it. And sometimes people specifically request more experience with how to navigate roundabouts because they're uncomfortable on how to do that and unclear about the rules."

Because roundabouts have only become common in the last two decades, Taylor says most people behind the wheel learned to navigate them after taking their road test and all too often, it shows.

But ultimately roundabouts are safer, according to the state Department of Transportation, especially when it comes to crashes.

Overall, they tend to be less severe.

"We're not running electricity to power a traffic light," said Bryan Viggiani, DOT spokesperson. "You don't have a vehicle idling at a stop sign or a stoplight. They're waiting for the traffic signal to change, you know, so it's got those multiple benefits. Where they work, they work really well."

In the last 20 years, close to 25 roundabouts have replaced intersections on state roads around the Capital Region.

"There is multiple things we look at," said Viggiani. "Will it fit in the spot, whether the traffic flow and, kind of all four sectors of a roundabout or the intersection as it exists will fit there, a number of other things."

With construction of CDTA’s new Crossgates Mall roundabout expected to finish late July, roundabouts are here to stay.

Taylor says appreciation for them is all about knowing how to navigate them.

"If one is not comfortable with them, one should probably go out on a Saturday or Sunday morning when there's not a lot of traffic," said Taylor. "Start with a single lane and then move on to some of the larger ones. When you're not bombarded with traffic like at 4:30 in the afternoon."