Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 06-20-25_FRIDAY_8AM

Episode Date: June 21, 2025

Ryan Steck joins me, his latest thriller OUT FOR BLOOD is a great read, highly reccommended! THen it is on to roundabouts...love them, hate them? Jay Beeber from the National Motorists Association reveals the stats good and bad on these.

The Bill Myer Show podcast is sponsored by Clouser Drilling. They've been leading the way in southern Oregon well drilling for over 50 years. Find out more about them at Clouser Drilling.com. Drop for free at LinkedIn.com slash. Here KMED and Krantz Pass on one oh five nine K two nine zero AF Rogue River in South Jackson County on one oh six seven K two nine four A.S. Ashland. Eleven minutes after eight. One of the greatest privileges of being a biggy pants talk show host, sometimes

full of himself, I try not to be too full of myself though, is that I get to read, I get advanced copies of books. And some of these books are really, really good. And one of the ones I've been reading lately here, in fact, it's another, well, of course, I liked his last book here too. And the author Ryan Steck joins me right now. His latest book is Gone Dark, a Matthew Red thriller, and I've been reading it, and it is a thriller, and I'm digging it.

And I wanted to talk with Ryan about that. Hello, Ryan, welcome back to the show. Thank you so much for having me again, man. Yeah. And thank you for sending an advance copy here. You know, like I said, it's an amazing privilege. But in all seriousness, you are what is called first off, I want to talk about you being the real book spy. What is the real book spy dot com?

What is that all about first? And then we'll dig in. Yeah, absolutely. So about 10 years ago, I just realized there was a hole in the market. Like I love thrillers. I love the books that are going to keep you up all night, you know, turning pages and you got to call in to work the next day. That's what I live for. And you know, it's very similar like in the literary world, it's similar to like in the

movie, in the movie world. My wife watches the Oscars every year. I never watch it. And every time I hear like which movie won best picture, I've never even heard of that movie, like let alone seen it. But I always see the billion dollar franchises, right? Fast and Furious and Mission Impossible

and all those ones, you know? But in the movie scene, those ones are sort of frowned upon. Well, in the literary world, right? Like thrillers never win awards ever. And yet they always dominate the New York Times bestsellers list. There's a huge fan base for these things. You know, look at book talk and so on. So 10 years ago, I just, I was writing reviews for other media outlets and thought, you know what, I'm going to do my own thing. And with support from some of the biggest names in

fiction, I launched the realbookspy.com, which is a one-stop shop for all things thrillers. So reading guides, interviews, exclusive news, reviews, everything you could want to find your next thrilling read, you can find on the realbookspy.com. And what I really like about your novels, by the way, Ryan, is that if you're going to write a really good thriller, and I would also say a spy novel, I put spy novels and thrillers in very much the same kind of thing, spy and espionage, various other things, is they have to be smart.

There has to be some smarts and realism that backs that up, which I would all imagine also makes it difficult to write them sometimes, doesn't it? Because you have to make sure you're talking about the right stuff. And if you're going to have Matthew Redd handle a certain type of firearm, you damn well better make sure that that firearm is described and operating the way it is in the real world. You just can't BS people, right? Wow, there's no one on the planet that will send you an email faster, the way it is in the real world. You just can't BS people, right? Well, there's no one on the planet

that will send you an email faster to let you know you got a detail wrong than gut nuts. And look, rightfully so. If you're gonna write a book and put it out on the market, you should do your research, do your homework. And certainly, look, I do so much research for each book, so much for this book, in fact. You always end up with more than you need, so then the trick becomes, how much for this book, in fact. You always end up with more

than you need, so then the trick becomes how much do you actually put into your book? So I would say legitimately, I'd probably use 10% of the research I end up doing makes it into the book. So you weigh over research and then you sort of cut it down and you get it to a point where, hey, I want the info to be in there. But again, my goal is to be thrilling and keep you up all night, that one-sit reading adventure. Yeah. Who was that author? Did the, like the sum of all fears, those other from the 80s? So what was his name? Oh, Clancy. Yeah. Yeah. Clancy. Clancy would sometimes go overboard on that, in which it would be 50 pages of

statistics on the submarine that they were on, right? That kind of thing. Yeah, I used to joke. It's so funny because my agent was one of Clancy's first editors. And when I was becoming a debut novelist, I was sending all my work to my agent. He would look at it and he would tell me, like, hey, I think you should cut this down or cut that down. And I would always tease him back and say, hey, where were you for Hump for Red October? Like I felt like I could drive

the submarine by the time I was done reading that book. So, you know, what do you bring that up? But yeah, I nowadays look, you can get away with that back then. Now we're in microwave America. People want things faster, quicker. They want to be entertained and engaged right now. And if you don't force the reader to turn the page, they won't. So we're just living in a different world. And I think we got to serve today's readers. Well, I'm about a third through this latest one, Gone Dark. I'm likely going to finish, or at least the bulk of it, this coming weekend because I need stories like this because,

especially out here in woke, weird Oregon. And Ryan, I don't know if you are aware that we have black drag queens that were dancing on the state house floor yesterday in order to be honored by the state legislature because it was an oppressed organization that just never had their due in the arts world apparently. I hunger. I didn't have a clue. Yeah, you didn't. Well, yeah, we're kind of a laughing stock in this. In a world, in fact, I feel like that guy that did the movies,

in a world, like the movie thing. But that's the world we live in. Then I go to the Matthew Redd thriller, Gone Dark, the latest one, and it's in Montana. It's big sky country. It's people who have great experience, and there are really bad guys out there and really good people who are killing the people that really need to be killed and it's I just like the way you do this and tell us a bit about Matthew Redd because like I said I really like the last one the what was that last one the blood the blood one what was it called? Out for blood. Yeah. Redd is a sludge hammer in the scalpel's world he's six foot three and a half, 265 pounds of muscle. Honestly, he's kind of the poster boy

for toxic masculinity. He's the guy you want in a bad situation. He's the guy where if you're kidnapped, you hope he's looking for you. Yeah, and you hope he shows up when disaster strikes, that kind of guy, right? That's right, that's exactly right, yeah. So Red is a former Marine Raider,

who in my first book called Fields of Fire, returns to his hometown of Montana for the first time in a decade to investigate the death of his adopted father, who was a cattle rancher, and accidentally unearthed this global conspiracy that only he could stop. And that thread kind of follows book one, two, and three. And so gone dark, now book four. Red is in a different place in life. He's married, he's got kids.

That means that there's more for bad guys to leverage. Yeah, his wife is a doctor, a smart cookie, all the rest of it. And you're right, there's more to lose here. And there's also another hook on this one, is that you're setting it in summer wildfires. And believe me, we have that all the time. And you got the bad dude. I still don't know who the bad dude is all behind here. But a guy fought... But you had... This is something which is just like a nightmare for our first responders, our firefighters. You have essentially an assassin hiding in a fire crew being thrown out over into

a wildfire situation here. And then fun and frivolity ends up ensuing, right? I was sitting outside last year and we had these wildfires from Canada blowing smoke over southwest Michigan. And I was doing some research about it and I learned that there's a career out there type of firefighter called smoke jumpers Which by the way if you're listening and you feel like you need some more action in your life and you're looking for a new New career. This is a real thing like smoke jumpers They literally get blown in and drop

Bill right in the middle of wildfires and they fight them from the inside out and I got to be real with you There's not much I'd rather do less than that. I mean, I have absolutely no desire. I'm, thank God people want to do that. But the way my brain works, because I'm a thriller novelist, I can't ever turn that off. So I don't research and read and watch the news and take it for what it is. I'm always thinking, well, how could this be worse?

How could this be a story idea? And I thought, you know, jumping into the middle of a fire to fight it from the inside out is probably one of the worst things you could do. What would make that worse? Well, I don't know, maybe if there's an assassin waiting in the middle of this wildfire. Yeah, and the assassin is taking out the firefighters too. That's right. Yeah. And why? And by the way, I'm not giving away the book though, but that's just how it starts off. I mean, the moment into it and it's like, okay, I'm hooked. You know, you got me.

It's really all off and running from there. None of that's a spoiler. You know, why is the killer doing this? Well, you have to grab Gone Dark to find out. But that's what Red has to deal with, you know, in the middle of this wildfire. And you know, again, I wrote it to be just an action packed, you know fast one-set read and that's what I hope it is. You know something else I appreciate this about your Matthew Redd character as like I said I kind of envisioned him the way you describe him you know six foot three and you know he

could kill me with a ballpoint pen you know that kind of thing and and it's all right it's all right we need people like that in the world, but unlike most Novelists who always have kind of like romance tension about will they get married or will they not you have a marrying his childhood sweetheart and It's like you know how like how unwoke that is these days. You know to do something like that I just wanted to say I appreciate that you know like a normal family life We're trying to have a normal family life out here in the on the ranch right? Well it's what I know you know I'm married I have six kids and there's just something about this moral conundrum that I like where Red, yeah he's a big guy not many guys can do what he does which is fight

the bad guys down on their level get in the shadows get in the mud with them but then come back and you know have dinner with his life and kids, put the kids to bed. And I just like that dynamic. There's some truth to the advice that writers always give, which is write what you know. But my advice is write what you want to read. And I guess with Reddit, it's a blending of the two. I know married life, I know family life. And I quite frankly, I get tired of the trope of the wife, the girlfriend, the fiance always dies. And it's a challenge to have them around

because then you gotta figure out what are they doing in the middle of this story. But, you know, Emily Redd, Redd's wife is based a lot on my wife. And in real life, my wife knows me better than I know myself. Though I'll literally go to the grocery store and put stuff in the cart and my wife will go, you don't like that. And I'm like, sure I do. She's like, no, you don't. She's right and I'm wrong.

Guys, that sounds like my conversations with Linda. Okay. No, you don't like that. No, I do. I think most married men would agree with that. Our wives know us better than we know ourselves. And that's the case for Matthew Redden and Emily is sort of his moral compass who frees him up and not only doesn't get mad when he goes to save the world, she's really the one telling him, hey, there's people out there. I've been one of them. They're in trouble. They're hoping someone like you is coming. So go do what you got to do and then come home to us. And that's the dynamic that I really wanted to put into my book for a variety of reasons. So I'm really glad that readers are connecting with that. Now the thing is, I'm not here to blow smoke at you or just be a slobbering fanboy, but

I have to tell you, after reading the last book, I'm really getting hooked into what you're all about. I appreciate people who are writing novels about, I mean, all individuals that may have some great skills and everybody, and you know, everybody has a flaw here and there. We're all human, you know, things are human. But what I appreciate about it is that so often, especially in the online streaming world of entertainment and even novels that get put and made into movies, etc.

Everybody has to be broken. Have you noticed that trend in which everybody, you know, they're broken, they're divorced, they're drug addicts or they're alcoholics? You know what I'm getting at? How it seems that so much of the arts these days has been into only having people who are broken, even the heroes. The hero has to be broken too on many levels. And I've gotten real tired of that I don't know about you. I do you know, it's tough. You have it's a balancing act, right?

You know one likes anyone who's too perfect and in this case red has fault But one of them is is not being unfaithful and things like that. He is a committed family man He loves his wife. He loves his kids He loves his country and he loves what he does which is to a cattle rancher. He wants to live this quiet life away from the world and the action. I really can't let that happen, right Bill? Because as long as readers are buying the books and my publisher is giving me contracts to write them, I can't let Red have his happily ever after on the ranch. So I got to find reasons to get this guy off the ranch, back into the fight. But the truth is, yeah, I totally agree with you. And I don't think you

have to have a broken hero. As long as they're flawed, so that you have somewhere to go with them, you know, I'm four books in and I'm still developing red. He's very real to me, the guy exists and lives in my head, you know, my everyday real life world, I know how red would react to situations. And then I'm like, wish I could and I can't, so I got gotta do it like a normal adult. And also by the way when I'm on radio I can say this. I can't say this for TV or podcast but when I'm doing radio I just want everyone to know Red and I are twins. We're both 6'3 and 265 pounds of muscle

and don't Google me. That's definitely a lie. I don't yeah yeah I'm looking at I'm looking at a picture of you on the back on the back one it's a little tiny picture but you kind of look like my my younger brother all right if you were me in other words fluffy I think would be the the term I don't know if you are not but yeah well I don't look as much like red as my wife probably wish as I did that part is probably true. But we need big guys like Red to get in there and do the tough jobs to save the day. And so he's a hero that I'm so thrilled to get to write stories with him and even happier that readers have really started to catch

on and like Red as much as I do. All right. Now promise me, Ryan, before we get out of here, and like Red as much as I do. All right, now promise me, Ryan, before we get out of here, is that Red, Matthew Red, does not experience gender dysphoria by the end of the novel, is he? No, he does not. He does not, okay, good.

Thriller alert, he does not. All right, good. I'm really digging this so far. It's Ryan Steck, Gone Dark. It's a Matthew Red thriller. We'll put all that information up. I got my lines filling up. I'm hoping they want to talk with you and staying on topic. We'll just see. If you don't mind, just indulge me here for a minute here, Ryan. Okay. Hi, KMED. This is Bill. Okay. Hi, this is Bill. Good morning. Who's this?

Morning, Bill. It's Deplorable Patrick. DP. You want to talk with Ryan about this? Morning Bill, it's deplorable Patrick. DP, you want to talk with Ryan about this? How you doing? Doing all right. I'm enjoying the program and your guest there and I'm a little nervous about trying to read his book because I can't afford to miss work. He's sitting up all night. But I want to make a little comment about the kind of in line with what you're talking about, about styles of writing. And I remember very, very clearly about, oh, at least 25 years ago, I've never forgotten that I've started reading a book about Frank and Jesse James in Clay County, Missouri, and it was so loaded with detail that it didn't even flow. I finally give up on it because it gets slugging through every little detail.

And I would applaud the author there avoiding that pitfall. All right. Deplorable Patrick, always a pleasure. Thank you for checking in. All right. Thanks, sir. All right. You know, Ryan, Patrick's going to have to get this.

He's just going to have to miss a day of work. But everybody needs a great summertime read, and this is one of them. And I read so much nonfiction. You're my fiction hit. And I just thank you so much for it. Best website to find out more about it. Is it The Real Book Spy or something else? What are you saying? Yeah, no, you can find me on therealbookspy.com or any social at Ryan's tech author or at the real book spy. And last thing, not for nothing, but you can read on the weekends too. So, you

know, don't have to miss work necessarily. Absolutely. Ryan, always a pleasure talking to you. You be well. Okay. Take care. Thank you so much. 828. Ryan's Tech Gone Dark. Highly recommended. In your library. 828. Did youck, Gone Dark, highly recommended in your library. 828. Did you know that SisQ Pump Service does much? 84. 830, we're going to catch up with the rest of the news here in just a moment. And then Jay Beaver joins me.

And it is one of the most controversial aspects of traffic planning everywhere. That is the, I I mean they're beloved I know everybody who's listening right now loves everything about roundabouts everyone loves scuba Steve is looking at me right now going no it's looking at me through his next door window here but yeah we're going to talk about that with Jay Bieber, National Motorist Association, great organization. And I'm a member, that's my dog in the fight, I am a member of that group and I am a motorist too. And they're a lobbying group there,

they're trying to keep all the stupidity off the roads. It's been a real battle with them lately here, but the good, the bad and the ugly. And we have roundabouts that are sold to us through all sorts of conditioning and stakeholder commenting and all the rest of it. And there's actually some science involved in it and some of it's true. There are some benefits of roundabouts.

But where do they go off the rails? We'll talk about that next on the Bill Meyer Show. I'm a member of the National Motorist Association. Jay Bieber is their big guy there. And every month I get this little magazine in the mail or, you know, I don't know, what do you call it? Well, newsletter. Maybe a newsletter is a better way of calling it. It's called Driving Freedoms.

And of course, freedoms have been under attack when it comes to the driving world for quite some time, which is why I like to stay in touch with Jay because he is out there in the trenches and fighting legislation that's bad and helping push legislation that is good. Jay, it's good to have you back on. Morning. It's always good to be with you. Jay, tell me a bit about how people can join National Motorist Association. I did and I'm really happy and you're keeping us informed on this kind of stuff. We're very pleased to have you as a member,

Bill. It's always great to hear from our members, especially one who is knowledgeable and also has a nice platform to let people know about this. But we, yeah, we're the National Motors Association. For those who don't know, we're the only organization in the country that is fighting for your rights every single day behind the wheel, your personal automobile. And we started out in the 80s to fight the 55 mile an hour national speed limits. So if you like going faster than 55 miles an hour on the highway without getting a ticket in most places, you can thank the National Motorist Association.

And yeah, that's what we've sort of been fighting for those kinds of things since then. And we focus on things like automated enforcement and all the war on cars stuff, the road diet and all of those things that certain groups out there are pushing to get you out of your car. So we're trying to protect your freedom to go where you want to go, when you want to go, how you want to go. Motorist.org to sign up. I wanted to just talk to you a little bit about, you had mentioned automated enforcement.

Of course, these are the red light cameras and we've had those battles here in Southern Oregon too, especially about mistimed ones. We have a local chiropractor that ended up filing a suit. They're trying to get it to class action status and moving forward. But we'll set that aside for right now. The automated car, the self-driving car supposedly, I can't help but think that the automated does the rise of that if it ends up coming through this whole focus on artificial intelligence and emphasis on artificial. Okay, Jay, what this is really about is driving us out of the car.

Is that a fair assessment given what you've looked at? Because something tells me that the only way the artificial car can be safe is if we unsafe humans are driven out of it. What do you think? That is exactly where we are headed. And we have a lot of concerns about that. Look, automated vehicles can be very helpful. Let's say people who have mobility problems, people who can't drive a car, can now get behind them. Well, there's no wheel, but can get into the vehicle and get taken where they need to go.

The problem is that they don't play well with human powered vehicles. So, you know, because humans are a little less predictable than a machine that does exactly what you tell it every single time. But also a machine can't make decisions in the same way and sort of adjust in the moment to every little thing that happens the same way that the human can. So there are going to be problems with humans and these automated vehicles safely interacting.

And eventually what's going gonna happen is they will argue that humans are just too dangerous to be behind the wheel and therefore you're not allowed to have a human powered vehicle. You'll have to have an automated vehicle. But even further than that, they don't want you to own your own vehicle. Oh, they want you to join the blob, in other words,

a self-driving car that's part of the herd, the hive mind, so to speak, right? Exactly. And so, you know, you'll call the vehicle, you know, it'll be like Lyft, Uber, Google, from the Waymo and that kind of thing. And then that's the only way you'll be able to get around. If you want some sort of personal type of vehicle on demand way you'll be able to get around. If you want some sort of personal type vehicle on demand,

you would be able to, you would have to call one, you have to wait for it to show up, and then you would have to go possibly where it wants to take you, because these are gonna be controlled by major companies. So if the company doesn't like where you're gonna go, just like they don't like what you're viewing on the internet, they're gonna have control over that. So the fight for

control of your vehicle is also the fight for control of your life in many ways too, and that's why I think that's an important distinction to move forward as we converse to the next part. Now between automated enforcement, self-driving cars, whether it's a Waymo on fire in Los Angeles riots or whatever else, there's probably nothing more controversial every time one pops up than the roundabout. Now I know the roundabout is the one true faith in traffic planning these days and I've noticed that the state of Oregon is big on this and even the road planners will tell me, Bill you know they're a lot less expensive to

build in a conventional intersection and then you'll hear other ways that it's being sold like, Bill, it saves carbon. Carbon emissions and is less idling. And you've actually have a great article in the latest newsletter, Roundabouts, Safer Streets or Circuit or Logic. Now, I can see appeals on both sides of this are good arguments. What do you, where do you come down on this? Well, first of all, the National Motors Association doesn't really take a stance whether roundabouts are good or bad per se. Like everything else, it depends. It depends on the situation, depends on what kind of roadway we're talking about. Sometimes

they might be okay, especially on maybe smaller roads where there's not a lot of traffic, not a whole lot of lanes that have to intersect with each other, so it's pretty simple for you know for you know drivers to get around one lane and be able to navigate that. But you know once you start getting too many cars, too many lanes, it gets too confusing and the fact of the matter is that that a roundabout isn't actually cheaper to build, it may be cheaper to maintain over time because you don't have to worry about like traffic signals and replacing those and maintaining those.

But in terms of actually building them, it's a little bit more expensive. Well, maybe it's a lot more expensive. But it really depends on the situation. The problem with roundabouts currently is that it's become again like this new religion of well you know a roundabout always of course you know that's that's that's the problem which is you know all all logic and reason goes out goes out the door

because it's become more of an ideology in planning than a tool. And by the way I actually can appreciate the at least the goal of the roundabout is to when at all possible keep people moving instead of having to stop and wait right isn't that the basic take of that and I can appreciate that aspect of it it makes sense. Yeah and that is true I mean look I actually I actually like roundabouts in some situations I'd rather if it's a small road I'd rather have that instead of a stop sign, instead of having to come to a complete stop. If it's that kind of you're slowing down and going to stop anyway, you know, if I can slow

down and just keep going around the roundabout, that's better. But you know, if you have, instead of a traffic signal, you know, maybe it's better that on the main road where there isn't a lot of intersecting traffic You don't have to slow down use keep going because it's on a green light Then that wouldn't be better in that situation So and and the his thing roundabouts are actually not safer per se in a sense that You actually end up oftentimes with more collisions. It's just that they less, when they do happen, they're less dangerous. There's just more of them now. In other words, obviously you're going to get more of a side-swipe kind of situation on a roundabout, but you're going to get more of those than at, say, a traffic

signal or a four-way stop. Yeah, you don't have as much of the head-on or the T-bone type of accident, right? Right. Okay. Exactly. All right. And you have a part of the head-on or the T-bone type of accident, right? Right. Exactly. All right. And you have a part of this roundabouts by the numbers here, and a 90% reduction in fatal crashes, but that's mostly in the low speed, right? Low speed, single lane, neighborhood type of conversions, right? That kind of thing.

That would make sense, I guess. Yeah. I mean, think about it. I mean, if you have an intersection and you have, it's much less likely to have a fatal crash. And when you talk about a 90% reduction, understand most of the time you're talking about a low reduction, you know, a reduction from a low number to start with because, you know, there aren't that many fatal crashes at any particular intersection over the years. So, you know, if you reduce by, you know,

let's say you've got, I don't know, a couple and then you reduce it by one or two, then you know, maybe that's a 90, that's maybe a 90% reduction. So, you gotta be careful about how the numbers are, but yeah, I mean, you're gonna most, you're gonna be less likely to have a collision at high speed, so it's less likely to be fatal.

OK. There's a roundabout that got added to my neighborhood recently. It's over on Springbrook in Medford, and it's not too far from a high school. And it's a three way. You know, you have Springbrook and then one street intersecting with it. And most of the time seems to work okay, but the one thing I've noticed about roundabouts is that when traffic gets heavy, and it's a single lane roundabout,

when traffic gets heavy, it gets very difficult. And you have real buildups on this because then you get to the point where there are so many cars circling the roundabout at the same time, especially during peak traffic season here, parts of the day, that people cannot get into the circle. Is that something which gets talked about in the in the roundabout numbers and so you're having to wait and wait and wait and wait in order just to

get a turn? Exactly. Once you get over a certain amount of vehicles, then it starts becoming less efficient, and you get cars that are backing up and waiting. And then all of that supposed benefit for the environment where cars just keep moving and they don't have to stop and idle at traffic light or a stop sign, all of that goes out the window because now you have a backup of cars that are idling that you wouldn't otherwise have. It's where, you know, if you had either a two-way stop sign, two stop sign intersection or say a traffic light on a green lane. So, like I said, everything's relative. Jay, what about the multi-lane? We only have a couple of those. I know

there's one on Highway 62 which was put in because there was a side street that would crash into, not Highway 62, Highway 140. And it's a highway speed out in the rural area. And the claim was, well we got to put a roundabout in here because too many people are just running through the stop sign and yeah we had a lot of stupidity and like people would routinely get hit by trucks and everybody else you know they they enter the intersection they wouldn't stop at the stop sign they wouldn't stop at the flashing light so the claim was that you know we have to put a roundabout now it's a two-lane you know

you have two lanes going in there and what did the safety stats say about that I don't know if we've had any problems there yet, but it's interesting as you go into multi- lane roundabouts, then the problems really start kicking in over time? Well, there's, let's see, some of the numbers that we have are just a 62% increase in total crashes at two-lane roundabouts, even though there might be a drop in injury severity overall, and a 30% rise in overall crash rates at multi-lane road roundabouts on certain corridors. Is it about confusion with the lanes?

Which lanes you should be in to go some way or another? That's what I'm saying. If you have two lanes or more lanes, some have actually three lanes, it gets really confusing as to which lane you need to be in. And then if you're in the inner lane and then you have to exit and maybe somebody doesn't realize you're going to do that, they come on and enter the roundabout. And again, if that's too close to each other, you can have a collision there. So they're not

the answer, they're not the panacea for everything. Okay, so in other words, be careful about it. You have a traffic engineer, retired traffic engineer in Illinois, saying that they are not magical. They can reduce fuel use in steady, low-volume conditions. And that makes sense. You know, it makes a lot of sense. But in heavy traffic or with a high mix of freight, the gains evaporate, right? That's what they're saying. So we're not throwing them under the

under the bus necessarily, but it just seems like this is almost held out, especially in Oregon, in progressive areas. I think they really love roundabouts, isn't that? Here's something that's interesting that will tell you that it's more ideology than anything else. Okay. The same exact people that are pushing for roundabouts for, because of climate change reasons and carbon emissions and that's their main argument, are the same people that want to eliminate your ability to turn right on red. You're right. And that's the difference. You're right, though. It's exactly the same people. And it's also the same people who are pushing for pedestrian safety, and roundabouts are

harder for pedestrians to navigate and cross and that sort of thing. So again, there's all this tension between all the different things that people want in their head, but because it's an ideology instead of a thinking thing. Well, I wonder if people have just... I wonder, Jay, if people have sucked up to the roundabout thing because, oh, it's European and if it's European, it must be good. Is there any truth to that? I've kind of wondered.

That's the problem. That is, there's this veneration of, well, it's European, it must be, you know, it must be, it must be great. And like I said, you know, there are situations where, you know, I like the roundabout and, you know, I live in the in the Phoenix area. There's a fair amount here in Arizona, in Sedona, which is, you know, it's a pretty, if anybody knows about it, it's a resort town. Hey, that's a woo, that's woo woo woo town, isn't it? It is. It's filled with woo woo. All right, so you're there to get in the good vibes.

Great, all right. Yep, exactly. Exactly, when I go for my healing session, I can go around the roundabout. And I feel healed about by doing that as well. But in Scottsdale where there's a big intersections intersecting and there's a roundabout, the traffic backs up. Um, um, you know, so I mean, it's like I said, it's like everything else, it depends

and we have to have rational thought behind it. Not, you know, there's no one size fits all and there's no, and there's no one answer to everything. But if you see the lens, if, you know, if you're looking through the lens of ideology, the knee jerk, it's the same thing. It's the same people that are like, well, if there's any problem on the roadway, road diet, take away a car lane. Right. Yep. That's it. It's exactly the same. Vision zero. Vision zero is the answer. It's just a knee jerk thing. It's just a knee-jerk thing. It's a fad. I have a feeling that it will go away at some point in terms of a fad, and then maybe hopefully get used for the right reasons in the right places. Jay Bieber, once again with the National Motorist Association. Great article in their monthly newsletter, Driving Freedom. I think it's just really interesting about roundabouts by the numbers. All right, let's grab a quick call here for Jay.

Heidi, do you want to talk with Jay about this? Good morning. Yes, this is Francine. Yeah, Francine, you're with Jay Bieber. Hello, Jay. Hi, Francine. As far as roundabouts go, I really like the one on Highland. I actually think it's pretty good. I did notice a pedestrian crossing recently, a man trying to cross, and he didn't actually use the allocated spot.

It did seem like it could cause an issue. Everything managed to go smoothly. But I still, I like it because I like the idea that we were given the option to use our own brains about when it's okay to go and when it's not. The only problem with that is most people have been trained now for years and continues going on to not use our brains. So that could present a problem as far as roundabouts go.

Yeah, I've noticed that a lot of indecision, fair enough. I'll give you that, Francie. And then as far as the one over on 140, I've experienced that one time, going in both, I went somewhere and then I came back and I did not like it. Highway 140, they take all the traffic and funnel it through a big roundabout the trucks and more Yeah, it's not a good idea traffic moves pretty fast through there and that's just I just don't think that was a good I think the multi-lane Plan for a roundabout is poor. I think locations like such as the one on Highland They're fine. Yeah, all right. All right as long as people can maintain some brain power. All right

Maintaining brain power. I like that. That's the quote of the day, I think here, Jay. Maintaining some. Exactly, well, you need to have the planners maintain some brain power here. I think that's part of the problem, not just the people that are using it. All right, let's grab another one. Hi, you're on with Jay Bieber.

Good morning, who's this? Yeah, Angie. Yeah, hi, Angie, go ahead. Hey, I approve of roundabouts. You do? Yep, I do. I think, well, first of all, I'm living off Blackwell Road and whoever idiots that organized the Blackwell Road Kirkland situation down here is absolutely stupid. Okay, duly noted. Now you came from Ireland though. You probably had roundabouts in Ireland, didn't you? I

had 14 roundabouts within two miles of my house. Oh goodness. She's used to it. You're used to it and you grew up with it. Yeah, yeah, she's used to it and grew up with it. And well, maybe this is the hope here, Jay. The idea is that to get everybody used to it and growing up with it and then they won't mind. They won't mind. Yeah, you know, that may is the hope here, Jay. The idea is that to get everybody used to it and growing up with it, and then they won't mind. They won't mind. Yeah, that may be the case. Or we all moved to Ireland.

Beautiful town. Our beautiful place. Of course, she's here now. Hi, this is Bill. Who's this? You're on with Jay Bieber. Hey Bill, it's Walt Salmon. Steve, you're on with Jay.

Question or comment? Go ahead. Well, first comment is the first time I ever ran into a roundabout was in Korea in 1971. And I had been voluntold to drive an ambulance from Camp Casey into a hospital in Seoul. And it's in the middle of the night. And the guy attending the injured or sick person, I don't remember, told me which way to go. So I come up to this giant roundabout. I think it's eight lanes and four lanes in the roundabout. Boy, that sounds like the roundabout over at the Champs-Élysées in Paris that we went through.

Yeah. Well, Korea was rebuilt after the war, so there was basically not much there. I don't know who designed the thing. But he told me to take the first road to the left, so I just drove around and went up there and he almost flew apart because you're supposed to go to the right. The Koreans had grown up with these things. If you went down there during heavy traffic, it worked pretty good. Because if you were going to go clear around to the far one, you went to the inside lane.

If you're going to turn in the one or two, you stay in the outside lane. Yeah. So you're basically saying, yeah, it took though, there was a learning curve, I guess, is what Steve was doing. I'm just almost out of time here. I don't mean to cut you off there Steve, but yeah there's some like and dislike on it on both sides and both sides are right I guess is really what you're saying. AJ? Yeah absolutely like we said you know it just it all depends

sometimes it's the right answer sometimes it's the wrong answer and we just shouldn't be making these decisions based on ideology or just a new traffic planning fad and we really need to do run numbers and try to figure it out and then you know the problem with roundabouts is once you build them it's expensive to make you make a change. Alright so if you're going to put one in make sure that it's really really really a good idea that's our takeaway from your article. And once again, Jay Beiber, National Motorist Association, motorist.org. Please join it if you could. And he's a, you know, lobbyer for better situations for the motorists out there. Jay, a pleasure. Thanks having you on

the show. Appreciate it. As always, a pleasure for us as well. Nice to talk to you, Bill. Thank you again. garrisons.com. You're hearing the Bill Meyers show on one oh six three KMED. Now Bill wants to hear from you. Five four one seven seven oh five six three three. And we only have time for a couple more calls, but a lot of people want to talk about the roundabout. Hi, Scott. How are you doing? Go ahead. Hey, I just wanted to sound out. I'm a professional driver since 1983 and I've gone through turnstiles and I just

wanted to say that I believe that making right turns helps that a lot. All delivery drivers like right turns and yield right started to work. We had a couple of those here in Medford in Canada. They have tons of them. Every right turn or almost every right turn is you yield. The other thing is when you come into a turnstile, I think that having a signal light when the thing gets full, okay, further back so that you start slowing down and you see, oh, it's going to be yellow, it's going to be green. If it's green, you just go through the turnstile. Alright, hey I appreciate the take on it.

What's that? Yeah, I appreciate it. I'm just running out of time, alright. I'm just going to turn into a pumpkin here shortly, okay? Alright, thank you Bill. I think we got the take on it. Thank you, probably as a professional driver. Alright, now Tracy, you're up north. You have a take on this too. I would love to get your opinion on a quick one here as we head out on the weekend on the roundabout. Go ahead. Yes good morning. So one of the key problems with the roundabouts and I've used them a lot in Europe is that they sometimes here in

Washington State try to put a roundabout in a very tiny space and it makes for very awkward turning and sight lines are very compressed so it's not good. I want everybody or especially you and think about this for next Wednesday there's a breaking story in the last couple days out of Washington State about the use of telematics and how the state of Washington is using it to focus their energies on where they're going to put the police cars and it's kind of scary what they the data they've grabbed.

Could you send me an article about that? It's at the King 5 website up there. Oh King 5, okay great I'll go look for that. Thank you Tracy and we will talk about that very soon next week especially. Email Bill at BillMeyersShow.com. This is KMED and KMED HD1, Eagle Point, Medford, KBXG, Grants Pass. Have a great weekend and we will catch you Monday morning. Town Hall News now. Breaking news this hour from Town Hall.com. I'm John Scott. Iran's foreign minister Abbas Rajee is in Geneva meeting with diplomats from the European Union, United Kingdom, France and Germany.

Britain's Foreign Secretary said he met with the Foreign Minister Abbas Rajee in Geneva.