A DeLand roundabout at the intersection where a grandmother and three young children were killed earlier this year is a step closer to being finished.

Workers opened a part of that roundabout Friday.

Albert Shoemaker and his wife will spend their first Christmas this year without granddaughters Aryana, 2, and Jaydn Thomas, 4. The girls' 4-year-old cousin, Aleah Zurzolo, was with them.

Sandy Lopes, Zurzolo’s grandmother, was driving in April when another SUV slammed into them at a high rate of speed, bursting into a ball of flames on State Road 44 and Grandview Avenue.

That crash prompted the construction of a roundabout at that intersection, which Shoemaker said would have made a difference in April’s horrific crash.

“It could’ve saved their lives,” he said, as they stood in front of a memorial honoring the family members who died that day.

Florida Department of Transportation officials said roundabouts slow down traffic and eliminate intersections, which raise the chance of catastrophic crashes like the one that killed the family.

“The roundabout in general eliminates the conflict points that an intersection provides," FDOT spokesman Jaren Peltz said. "That's the concept behind it to allow the flow of traffic. ... Eliminating the conflict points would eliminate the opportunity for those to occur.”

Sidewalks around the roundabout will be 8 feet wide to protect pedestrians.

Right now, the speed limit is 40 mph, much slower than when the fatal crash occurred. But the roundabout will force drivers to slow down even more as they approach it.

“There will be a 15 mph advisory speed as you approach the roundabout itself,” Peltz said.

“If you have a 15 to 20 mph accident, it's a fender bender. It's not a full 55 mph accident,” Shoemaker said — the type of accident he said won’t rob other families of their loved ones.

For now, only one side of the roundabout is open. The opposite side is slated to open in January, with a ribbon-cutting on the finished roundabout planned for spring 2017.