As soon as I saw the image this is exactly what I started doing in my head.

I finished this in 8 moves? Not that hard

No they don't. They still have nightmare of item contamination.

Tbf, they also have the arthropod invasion sorted out.

I did, then spaceage broke all my old intersection templates

They were stuck for 10 minutes and needed to be directed from the outside. It's maybe not that long, but they struggled with figuring it out. Source (in Norwegian, this happened in Oslo): https://www.vg.no/nyheter/i/3pkoP9/busser-fast-paa-alexander-kiellands-plass-i-oslo

there are probably cars there facing the bottom bus, no? it's the enter lane, not an exit lane

It is, but none of the four bus drivers have all of the information. You will also need two or three cops or at least guys in fluorescent vests to physically block traffic from entering the circle and or bitch-slap selfish asshats as necessary until the Gordian knot of buses is untied, otherwise said selfish asshats will try to barge into the intersection the second the first bus moves and start everything all over again.

Also, fewer cars will help.

I think it was a combined, synchronized effort

Bus on left hand side of screen sealed the deal, but it was a concerted effort of fuckery

Each one of them screwed up independently. It takes a concerted effort to reach this situation.

I don’t know what’s going on in this picture, but, whatever it is, being accidental is last on my list of possible explanations

It's a deadlock situation and can arise without any screw ups. Imagine the buses being 5x as long and all reach the intersection at the same time as an example. All have space to enter the roundabout but they'll reach the same situation as in the picture.

To fix this people uses signals and can be done by having the buses follow "Only 1 or 2 articulated (double) buses are allowed into the roundabout at a time". A rule like that might be required if you have a lot of articulated buses. The risk of this happening depends on how many ways you can enter a roundabout no a bus like that, how long the buses are, how frequently they run and how big the roundabout is.

1 of 2. Either the car drivers going on the inside of the busses, hindering them enough space to make the turns, or the bus drivers allowing it to happen.

happened again