Editor, Manteca Bulletin,
 I have lived my entire life in Manteca.  I recently have been commuting from Manteca for college and stumbled upon your article on the Manteca Bulletin Facebook feed.  It is a tragedy that there was an accident on a roundabout on Woodward Avenue which caused two deaths.  Any death in my hometown is tragic.  In a city where we project as being a “Family City” there’s a lot of car accidents, theft, and death.
The roundabouts in my opinion have been a problem since they were installed.  I live a street over from Woodward and have either heard people speeding or witnessed people going over the speed limit.  The islands and roundabouts should prevent speeding or illegal passing but this is often not the case.
It has become common place in the past to see people drive over the speed limit on Woodward between Union and Airport.  With the new housing district coming in it should be expected to be driven at a lower speed.  The roundabout on Woodward and Oleander has been there for some time and it is expected by any average Manteca resident that travels on Woodward.  The problem arises when there is a brand new roundabout added after Woodward was closed then reopened. I did not expect to see another roundabout when I was Woodward after commuting from school after a few weeks.  Since the roundabout was new and I was not expecting it I almost hit it with my car. 
All of the construction and increased residential traffic has increased problems for people who use Woodward.  I believe that there needs to be signs posted making people aware that there are roundabouts especially if they are new.  Stop signs which prevent the proper flow of a roundabout also play no purpose because roundabouts shouldn’t require stop signs for traffic to move.  There are stop signs on the roundabout on Oleander and Woodward but not the other new roundabout.  Both the roundabouts are also vastly different when compared to their construction.  I think that Woodward would have done fine without the construction on roundabouts and instead just focused on islands with stop signs to direct the flow of traffic into the new housing districts.

Mike Merilles
Manteca