Roundabouts and 4-way stops are used in different situations - a 4-way stop is typically used in residential neighborhoods or street grids where the roads are only single-lane and the lack of available space prohibits a roundabout.
In Europe the residential area would either
1. Have no signs resulting in the car to the right getting the right of way
2. One road gets a right of way sign and the other road had to yield.
I strongly prefer those setups because they are much more fuel efficient.
However, I don't think any of that would work in the UD because it would require real driving classes and tests. I had to drive around for close to 20 hours with a professional driving teacher on to of dozens of hours of theoretical classes. All that end in a 30min+ examination with a examiner in the back of the car putting me through as many challenging situations as possible.
In the urban eastern U.S. apartment buildings usually run right up to the road, except a ~ 1-3meter sidewalk. There isn't sufficient visibility to yield safely; both directions have to come to a stop anyway to check for cross traffic.
In the western U.S. (and eastern suburbs) the 4-way stops are largely vestigial; I'd agree that most of them could go away without any loss of safety. Many of the newer neighborhoods are signed that way anyway, though - I just drove through one this morning with 2-way yields.
My driver's ed class was IIRC 36 hours of instruction and 12 hours in the car, with a professional driving teacher. It had an hour long examination putting me through as many challenging situations as possible at the end.
It's also a matter of being used to bicycle traffic, and training. In the Netherlands in a residential area there are probably more bicycles than cars, so every car driver is used to being careful at junctions.
And on average a person needs 38 hours in the car with a professional teacher before they pass the exam, most people don't pass on the first try.
Most middle- and upper-class Americans take a driver’s education course (like what you’ve described) prior to receiving their driver’s license. In 10 years it won’t even be necessary because nobody’s going to be driving themselves anyway.
A lot of the cars on the road right now are ten years old or older. Even if self driving cars became a thing that anybody can afford right now it would take longer than ten years before nobody had to drive themselves.
Except pedestrians, bikers, cyclists, etcetera. (Plus you are overestimating the rate of change: I still see horse carriages on the road, 100+ years after the beginning of the car era)
And don't get me started on driver ed in PA, USA: in my case, it consisted of a video, signing an drivers' permit application - and voila, go out there and drive (under supervision). I was shocked, shocked.
In the UK you can get a provisional license that allows supervised driving with zero training. It's assumed your supervisor (anyone holding a driving licence for something like 7 years or more) will stop you doing stupid shit.
Interesting. I was so used to the continental idea "driver school takes at least weeks and is like any other training, except it's in a car" that the opposite approach was highly unexpected to me; it does make sense though.
There are plenty junctions that have been turned into a roundabout simply by painting a circle in the middle and putting up the necessary signs. They don't need that much space, especially in places that are low speed, low traffic volume like residential neighbourhoods.
