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KENNEWICK -- Carl Isaacson calls it the "Hard-brake Helix."
It's the "Spaghetti Bowl" for Justin Carhart.
Kelly Collier Rauh is sticking with the "Confound-about."
Almost everyone seems to have a nickname for the double roundabout at the Highway 395 and Highway 240 interchange in Kennewick.
The Tri-City Herald wants to know your favorite.
"What a lot of folks call it would be unprintable in a family paper," Kennewick resident Kay French, who suggested Moebius Strip, wrote in an e-mail.
Maybe, but that hasn't stopped dozens from submitting 55 nominations for a moniker for the new roundabouts. Herald staff members sorted through those and narrowed the field to 15.
Now it's time to vote. Go to www.tricityherald.com and click on "Vote for 240/395 interchange name" in the "Breaking News" box.
Carhart navigates the roundabout daily to and from work. He remembers the first time he encountered it.
"I thought it was an extremely bad idea," he said.
Carhart, 29, grew up in Las Vegas and remembers the Sin City's old Spaghetti Bowl, a twisting, looping, intertwining configuration of on-ramps, off-ramps and junctions. "It was very confusing."
Kennewick's double roundabout reminds him of the driving debacle at home.
Isaacson, a 49-year-old Richland resident, has traversed the double roundabout dozens of times since it was completed over the summer.
Asked why he dubbed it the "Hard-brake Helix," Isaacson quipped, "On average, you're going to brake. I don't like the design."
Isaacson spent some time in the United Kingdom, where he encountered a triple roundabout in Aberdeen that helped him develop a philosophy for piloting Kennewick's Hard-brake Helix.
"They are really simple," he said of roundabouts, "as long as you yield to someone who looks like they're in a hurry."
Rauh's moniker for the double roundabout occurred to her while listening to a radio show.
"People find it confounding," she said. "It's confusing, it's convoluted."
Rauh said she's still toying with how to best tackle the roundabout's curves. She used to take the outside lane, until she was recently cut off by a driver who failed to yield at a roundabout entrance. Now she takes the inside track, but fears she might get boxed in if she wants to make a lane change.
"I'm still experimenting," she said.
Unlike many drivers, Rauh is beginning to warm to the roundabout. She's even embracing it, explaining, "It's fun, it's a challenge."
Although the double roundabout may be daunting, demanding and, to some, Draconian, it's unclear if it's dangerous.
Several submitted names -- "Loops of Death," "Death Trap," and "The Double-Helix Figure-Eight of Death!" -- imply it's perililous, but there are few statistics, if any, to back that up.
Lt. Jay Cabezuela of the Washington State Patrol said crash figures haven't been well tracked so far. "We don't have any hard numbers right now because we're still in the construction phase."
However, Cabezuela and Moe Davari who works for the Department of Transportation -- who was project engineer for the interchange project -- say crashes have decreased significantly since the double roundabout has been built.
And Cabezuela said many of the crashes in the double roundabout occur at low speeds and are often fender-benders, while crashes on the old interchange often happened at higher speeds and caused more damage.
Davari, a project engineer, said DOT will begin gathering statistics sometime next year.
-- Drew Foster: 585-7207; dfoster@tricityherald.com
