The shortest route between two points is a straight line. But what about the safest route?

Apparently that involves small, often-confusing circles.

At least according to the state Department of Transportation, which last week published a report showing that roundabouts, also known as traffic circles, massively reduced crashes overall and nearly eliminated vehicle accidents that result in injuries.

Just how effective are they? According to PennDOT, 11 roundabouts that replaced stop signs or traffic lights on state roads — including two in Western Pennsylvania — reduced fatalities from two to zero; serious injuries from seven to zero; and injuries of minor or unknown severity from 68 to five. Total crashes at the intersections went from 101 to 54. The data deals with the period from 2000 through 2017.

Those results are too high-impact to ignore or reject out of hand. So while traffic circles are not appropriate for use everywhere, the department’s push to explore how they might be used as solutions to complex and dangerous intersections is a positive step.

That includes in Cranberry Township, which in 2009 welcomed its first roundabout at Cranberry Woods. The township is now home to many more traffic circles — including on Glen Eden road, Cranberry Springs Drive and North Boundary Road — with still more slated for construction as part of projects like the MSA Thruway.

Township planners celebrate traffic circles as requiring less routine maintenance than traffic signals and more friendly for both motorists — for whom they reduce commute times — and the environment, which planners say benefits from less stop-and-go traffic, and pedestrians who face more predictable traffic patterns because the circles are one-way.

Of course, not all residents are sold on the roundabouts, and they can’t be installed everywhere. In particular, intersections that have hills or challenging topography can’t usually accommodate a traffic circle. That sounds like many in Butler County.

Still, with so many benefits and the only downside being that motorists need to learn how to best navigate something relatively new and novel, there’s no reason not to pursue more roundabouts — both here and across Pennsylvania.

For once, going in circles doesn’t seem like such a bad thing.