The solution that’s never on the table is getting rid of most stop signs.
The main point of a stop sign is to control intersections that objectively need the stop to permit safe traffic flow.
We are instead seeing unwarranted stop signs proliferate like rabbits, justified by things they can’t do, like slow or calm traffic.
On top of that, we’re ignoring the problems _caused by_ unwarranted stop signs, including crashes that wouldn’t otherwise happen, increased noise, increased pollution (especially small particles in the stop sign’s vicinity), higher speeds that are induced after the stop sign (drivers make up for time lost at the stop), and the broader consequences of reducing credibility of traffic regulations overall (people aren’t stupid, and when they are conditioned to that stop signs are mostly pointless, the conditioning bleeds over to the whole regime of traffic regulations).
Stop engineering malpractice, ditch most stop signs, and problem solved!
In west coast cities, stop signs seem to serve the purpose of letting pedestrians exert their legal right of way where it would otherwise be taken by cars. Without stop signs, cars are not really likely to stop and pedestrians will wait until the road is simply clear rather than playing a one sided mortal game of chicken. The result is that cars can pretend that the pedestrian doesn't actually want to cross. With a stop sign, pedestrians can reason that a car has to stop for the stop sign, and so they will also be able to walk.
That said I think stop signs is a terrible solution to this issue.
Said it better than me, at the same time. It's also better than a fully controlled intersection with lights for pedestrians, since you don't have to wait for a light cycle or choose to cross on red.
It's pretty sad to see people having to wait for a gap to sprint across a road, and little wonder that the situation perpetuates people driving everywhere - it's the safest and fastest way to even cross a street.
But there's an even better alternative to that: pedestrian controlled lights.
There is a main road in France I often take, in the south Paris (RN 20), that goes through a small town. There are traffic lights that are only there for the pedestrians. When there's no one there, they'll be green for cars. When there are pedestrians waiting, they can push a button that'll switch the lights.
Instead of the repurposed stop sign, this has the advantage that cars can flow through without stopping at all when there are no pedestrians, which is basically always. I've only ever stopped there a handful of times.
They reduce car crashes with other cars. I don't know off the top of my head if they reduce car-pedestrian crashes but I suspect not.
I used to live off of a busy roundabout in a place that makes heavy heavy use of roundabouts (almost no four-way stops). It felt dangerous as fuck honestly. The crosswalks are a little "downstream" of the true circle, where cars have already begun to exit. Frequently (saw this a few times myself) a car would stop for a pedestrian and then get rear-ended by another car focused on exiting the roundabout.
This was not the US so unfamiliarity with roundabouts can't be blamed. They were the norm there.
Every time I see a crosswalk near a roundabout, I think that's a terrible place for a crosswalk (the drivers are distracted by figuring out if they need to stop, and when it's clear to keep going).
How small can you make a roundabout? Where I live stop signs are common at very small intersections.
Alternating two way stops (n/s at intersection one, e/w at intersection two) seems like maybe an ok way to reduce the problem by half at little to no cost?
There's a configuration for bike safety that's basically a mini roundabout superimposed on a normal intersection. It doesn't significantly increase the size of the intersection, but the geometry works out in a way where bikes can go at near full speed, but it's impossible for a right turning car and straight going bike to get into a collision without seeing each other first (assuming both are looking forward while driving).
Mini roundabouts are very likely to be confusing horrors, outside of low-speed residential zones, parking lots and the like.
See the city of Nantes in France (roundabout’s paradise), navigating the intersections is horrible. In a few parts of town they even have double mini roundabouts. The only reasonable explanation I found is “security by confusion” : if you have no idea how to drive through the intersection, you’re more likely to slow down. Well it doesn’t make the intersection really safer.
I've seen some in Vancouver that are little more than an oversize planter with a scrub in it stuck in the middle of the intersection. As long as it deflects traffic to the side a bit, a slowdown is achieved and the main purpose fulfilled.
Basically they recommend 28m diameter if you are going to have a central island, otherwise it should be a mini-roundabout (capable of being driven over)
I’ll add that in my family’s home town (farming town in Perthshire) in Scotland, there are mini roundabouts that are just a spot of white paint in the middle of the intersection. It works fine.
Roundabouts generally require a driver to look in a direction other than their direction of travel, to determine if it is safe to go. They are also designed to reduce the amount of time any given vehicle has to actually stop if there is no reason to. However, to keep the flow, a driver must check if there is incoming traffic. This varies based on left/right side driving countries. Lights for pedestrians might help, but then the benefit of continual traffic flow is reduced. There are more considerations that can make it work, but I often see this point (my first sentence) overlooked.
> Roundabouts generally require a driver to look in a direction other than their direction of travel, to determine if it is safe to go.
True for stop signs... and any other traffic control solution in existence, frankly. Yielded merges are the most obvious form of specifically unbroken traffic flow that requires the same.
> They are also designed to reduce the amount of time any given vehicle has to actually stop if there is no reason to.
So it works like a yield. That's a good thing because it reduces congestion.
> This varies based on left/right side driving countries.
There are much bigger issues resulting from switching between left- and right-side driving standards which don't have anything to do with roundabouts, so this doesn't say anything about roundabouts so much as the difference in standards.
> Lights for pedestrians might help, but then the benefit of continual traffic flow is reduced.
Comes with the territory, and is also true of every other traffic control solution in existence. The complete solution to this is to completely separate pedestrian and vehicular traffic, which is also not limited to roundabouts.
It sounds like you don't have a problem with roundabouts so much as traffic control per se, if you believe these to be reasons not to implement roundabouts.
>> Roundabouts generally require a driver to look in a direction other than their direction of travel, to determine if it is safe to go.
> True for stop signs...
Not really. Stop signs make you stop first, before needing to look around, after which you continue. There's no "direction of travel" when you've stopped; you're not traveling when you've stopped. Meaning you can focus on one thing at a time, unlike with a roundabout.
Huh? The point is that your attention (and vision) isn't nearly as divided when driving with a stop sign than with a roundabout. You don't have to multitask nearly as much; you do one thing at a time. Less division of attention = less car accidents.
It doesn't sound like you're familiar with any of the studies concerning the safety of traffic flow if you think that that is the only factor that determines intersection safety.
> It doesn't sound like you're familiar with any of the studies concerning the safety of traffic flow if you think that that is the only factor that determines intersection safety.
I'm pretty sure "the only factor that determines intersection safety is division of attention" was not a stance I was taking (when is an event ever a function of just 1 variable in the real world?), but if you'd prefer to take a swipe at me regardless, it would be nice if you could make your response constructive and actually link to some studies that show I said something contrary to reality, if you're well-studied in traffic flow.
Hopefully my reply clarified for you what my earlier point was, even if you think the point was wrong.
The implied point of the above comment was that, while specific linear relationships can be hypothesized, and shown in certain limited controlled experiments, the nonlinear interactions with every single other factor makes such an assertion not only meaningless but also misleading.
"Well-studied", no, I would not claim that. I follow the zeitgeist of urban planners as they discuss topics like this on the fora in which they congregate. I read some of the studies they post and discuss, and I have picked up on some of the memes present in that community. Something that comes up again and again and again and again (and which is immediately apparent upon reading the research) is the primacy of roundabouts for intersections, because they are the safest of the popular options and less prone to congestion than stop signs, stop lights, etc. Even when they do get congested, the outcomes are better for everyone on average, since everyone waits a similar amount of time compared to the asymmetry of e.g. intersections with stoplights. One common pitfall in thinking about these things is only thinking about individual wait times in a subjective sense, and not aggregate wait times in a systemic sense. The latter perspective provides much clarity.
Here, I did your Googling for you. Where do I send the invoice?
For those who live outside the US (or maybe outside California) in California there is a legal crosswalk (ie a 'zebra crossing') at EVERY uncontrolled (ie without lights) intersection, whether it is painted in or not, and pedestrians have absolute right of way (the trade off is that they are not allowed to cross anywhere along a block between intersections).
I now live in NZ where mostly we have Yield/Give Way signs if anything, and pedestrians have no rights (also the neighbourhood speed limit is higher 30mph vs 25) - I'd love for us to have 4 way stops everywhere and slower speed limits everywhere
There's pedestrian crossings in NZ, but sounds like a lot fewer.
Plenty of stop signs here though, but it kinda depends on where you're driving though. They're rather rare in cities now, either replaced by lights or roundabouts.
And honestly, NZ road rules at a "4 way stop" confuse the crap of everyone, as they violate the general assumption of "just give way to your right".
(E.g., I'm at a 4 way stop, I'm going straight, the person to my right has the right of way... ...if he's going straight. If he's turning, then I have right of way. Far more complex.)
But there's still lots of them in the country still :)
US rules for 4-way stops are easier to deal with - if you are the first to come to a full stop you get to go first (people learn to judge that little jump on your shocks as you actually stop) then people take turns (N-S then E-W then N-S etc) - if it's unclear then the NZ-like rules take over.
Yes NZ has occasional pedestrian crossings, but not at the one place we most need them (roundabouts) - what we don;t have are ubiquitous ones (at every intersection)
I like the solution of the pedestrian triggered stop signs. The don’t literally say stop but they flash yellow and cars have to stop even if there’s no one in the street.
If you’re talking about at least California, that isn’t how those work, and please never stop at one unless it’s occupied. Those of us who read the book are expecting you to proceed through an empty crosswalk because we know the flashing yellow lights are legally advisory and often keep going long after the crosswalk is empty. Some even flash permanently. Every time you stop for an empty, flashing crosswalk, you’re risking a collision that you’ll probably get away with, but that will really be your fault deep down.
This is quite simple: if a pedestrian is threatening to cross or actually crossing, whether the crosswalk is painted, flashing, not flashing because they didn’t push the button, or even merely implied by an unpainted intersection (another overlooked reason to read the book, given my pedestrian experience!), you yield. Otherwise keep moving. It’s that easy.
I absolutely can't stand beg buttons for pedestrians. Nothing indicates more to pedestrian that they are second class road users than having to push a button to ask permission for the gods of traffics to be able to cross. When driving, I always make it a point to slow down for flashing yellow signs; any small thing I can do to make the streets feel less dangerous for pedestrians. Same as crossing right on red, I'll never do it, out of principle, it's so trashy, everybody who's walked anywhere has almost been killed by a driver turning in a little too cavalier.
> but that will really be your fault deep down
Not true, it is definitely most certainly the fault of the cars behind you. It's because of the driver behind you is too aggressive or careless, and not keeping proper distance. If they can't slow down for a car in front of them, they certainly can't either when there's a true emergency, like a dog or child sprinting across the street. There's a million reasons why the car in front of you may have to slow down or come to an emergency stop, and that's why you keep proper distance from cars in front of you.
> if a pedestrian is threatening
It's just a turn of phrase, I get it, but pedestrians can never threaten a driver. They get maimed or killed if they do. It's such an insidious mindset that somehow pedestrians and drivers have equal responsibilities, when the power to inflict harm is so enormously lopsided.
It's this way with on-demand flashing pedestrian signals in my city in Washington as well, though honestly I see it in practice (and do it myself) without actually knowing what the law is.
We also have at least one red light that is strictly for pedestrians that I find irritating every time it's triggered, since it requires a full stop cycle even if the person or persons using it cross quickly or not.
If you’re going by the book you should never be following another car closely enough that you can’t stop in time to avoid a collision, even if they come to a full stop unexpectedly.
You clearly misunderstood the point of mentioning being rear ended, which wasn’t that I’d be rear ending you, but instead the dumbass who doesn’t know that. It was really a warning about property damage to your own car from stopping unnecessarily, which is why I mentioned legal and actual fault since we’re discussing California.
And no, being rear ended is not an automatic “they should have been further away,” including potentially in this circumstance. Full stop in a travel lane on an interstate and report back on your fault determination if you survive.
What is it about driving that makes threads personal? The person was totally wrong in a heavily-read forum is all, and that’s your cue to put me in my place for pointing it out or something?
I looked it up for California and the best I could find is that if someone stops or slows inappropriately they could bear partial blame. Partial as in not all of it, so some of the blame stays on the person doing the rear ending. To me this infers that you are not following the book if you don't leave enough space to stop in time.
>What is it about driving that makes threads personal?
How did I make this personal? By using the pronoun "you"? I was doing that in a general sense and not targeted, which I thought you were doing as well in your own post.
> And no, being rear ended is not an automatic “they should have been further away,” including potentially in this circumstance. Full stop in a travel lane on an interstate and report back on your fault determination if you survive.
You're surprised that interstates are a special case?
> What is it about driving that makes threads personal? The person was totally wrong in a heavily-read forum is all, and that’s your cue to put me in my place for pointing it out or something?
Yeah, you just wandered in and started telling people that they were Wrong, and that even if legally they were in the right they were still Wrong; I can't imagine why anyone would take issue.
You’re arguing from a point of misunderstanding. Pedestrian triggered cross walks these days have signs that only flash while occupied and have signs that warn drivers again by flashing, ahead of the crosswalk.
When I first visited the US the frequent stop signs were one of the strangest things to me. They are so rare in Europe where there are yield and right of way signs instead. Ever since I've been wondering if the fossil fuel lobby is causing this to drive up fuel consumption.
I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago in the 70s. Our house was on a corner.
The city decided that just about every uncontrolled intersection should have a stop sign, and for busy intersections, a 4-way stop. It happened that they put in the stop signs in the winter. We had a few weeks of entertainment watching out the front window as car after car was caught off-guard by the new stop sign. They'd try to panic stop at the last second and of course slide right into the intersection.
I find the "right of way" signs in Europe way more strange, specifically when the signs aren't present. When you're on a main thoroughfare, it's pretty obvious you have the right of way. It's on the smaller side streets where you need to yield to the person to your right that things get a little weird.
It's natural once you've learnt it -- throroughfare doesn't really matter, the street you're on is signed as having right of way or you have yield signs, otherwise always yield to the car from the right. No signage => yield right.
I'm still not sure who's got the right of way e.g. in US parking lots or unsigned back roads. The person going straight, I think? But that's not always clear depending on road topology. "Yield to the right" seems more well-defined, but maybe because I got used to it.
You always have the right of way in the U.S. unless there is a stop sign or a yield sign. If both directions have stop signs, then the person who arrived first has the right-of-way. To me, it's more straight forward to always have right-of-way, but that's probably because I'm used to it.
Unsigned intersections exist and they work as in Europe. The reality of them is people handle them relatively well as long as lines of sight are good, and when they become a problem they’re improved (usually by adding a stop sign that people ignore).
Traffic calming is better done with mechanisms not signs.
> You always have the right of way in the U.S. unless there is a stop sign or a yield sign.
Incorrect. There are explicit right of way rules for completely unsigned intersections. Yes, they do exist. My neighborhood hasn’t been fully polluted with stop signs yet, so about half our intersections are unsigned. The last crash in the neighborhood that I am aware of was about 10 years ago and was wholly unrelated to intersection control.
Driveways, parking lots, and some merge lanes don't have stop or yield signs. So it's not always marked.
Much more interesting are one lane tunnels or bridges that have a yield sign on both sides. Effectively, people just do fist come first served, but if it's at the same time you have to negotiate who has the right of way.
Small streets can be difficult but often in the U.K. you just get a thick dashed line across the road when you need to give way in a normal place. That’s usually sufficient to figure out which street takes priority over the other (intersections where the middle isn’t part of one of the roads are uncommon) and where to give way.
The weirdest part for me is that there is no reliable way to tell if the crossing street also has a stop sign (at least in CA). After 5 years of living in the US I still get annoyed about it.
It seems like that if cross traffic doesn't stop, the stop sign doesn't have a marker. If it does, it gets a tag like "ALL WAY". No idea if this is standardized or an artifact of my sampling, or if it varies between states.
(I had to really rack my brain to find a 4 way stop in NYC. Ultimately the satellite view was helpful, they seem to not paint crosswalks if traffic doesn't stop. Seems dangerous! People are going to cross those streets. But I digress.)
In AZ "4 Way" or "All Way" signs are almost always present when applicable. These "Cross Traffic Does Not Stop" signs [1] are common (but not universal) at other intersections.
The worst variant I know on this idea afflicts several intersections in my daily driving environment (west side of Portland): stop signs with little addenda saying "3-way stop". So one direction doesn't have to stop. And they don't tell you which one it is. Is that car coming from your left going to barrel through, or not? Maybe that's a stop sign over there, maybe not, it's hard to tell from the back. Come on.
that sign (along with cross traffic does not stop) exists in CA, but it's not universal enough to rely upon an absence of that sign meaning a 4 way stop.
My driving instructor* ~20 years ago said that's the reason stop signs are hexagons – you can see it's a stop sign from the other side. Same for why yield signs are inverted triangles – the person who doesn't have that sign can see from its shape what it is.
No, only the yield and stop signs, and the right of way sign (diamond shaped) have unique shapes. Oh wait, the one way sign too, being a long rectangle. Other signs are shaped according to group: Warning signs are triangular, tip up, signs forbidding or mandating something are round (distinguished by color), and informational signs are rectangular. And one interesting case is the do not enter sign, which is usually curved. That makes it more obvious to someone looking for a turn, but also you can recognize it from behind so you know to go in the far left lane if you plan to make a left turn.
I think there's non-infrequently an "All Way" sign under the stop sign if the crossing street has one too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All-way_stop But I'm not sure how common that is.
There (should) be a very small rectanglular sign right below the stop sign that says "4 way" meaning there are stops on all 4 corners. I've always thought these were way too small to notice and I wouldn't be surprised if they were often missing.
That is part of why the MUTCD requires that the hexagonal shape of the stop sign not be obscured from either side. That way, you have a clear visual reference if there is an hexagonal sign in the opposing directions.
Like any good UI, it isn’t something I could immediately recall, but it is something I mostly unconsciously notice when driving. You can also look for signs, but it isn’t as trustworthy.
I really like this design. The UK has a similar system, where there's always a line across the road whenever road users have to stop or give way. There are different types of lines [1] but even without knowing by heart what each of them means I've always found it obvious what one has to do (based on signs and other road markings).
Is there a name for the logical fallacy that if an aspect of a system benefits a group, that the group must have planned said system aspect?
It's a constant thread amongst all conspiracy theorists:
GW Bush BENEFITED from 9/11, therefore he must have had some hand in planning it.
Tech monopolise BENEFITED from COVID, therefore it's a "plandemic".
Fuel sellers BENEFIT from stop signs, therefore they coordinate putting more of them up.
Yes, they are called conspiracy theories. I don’t know if there is a more specific name, but I don’t think calling it a fallacy is correct as a fallacy means incorrect, while a conspiracy means it is unprovable/secret. Conspiracies can be false, but they can also be true with proper evidence and then it is called a scandal.
> but I don’t think calling it a fallacy is correct as a fallacy means incorrect
The (logical) fallacy is in the word "must". Let's look at the statement again:
> if an aspect of a system benefits a group, that the group must have planned said system aspect
This is incorrect because sometimes groups benefit from things they haven't planned. If the statement were changed to "that there is a good chance the group planned said system aspect", it would no longer be a fallacy.
It's the same as the slippery slope fallacy. Slippery slopes are real things. Sometimes A does get out of hand and cause B. Saying that if A happens, B must happen is where it becomes a fallacy. Changing this to "If A happens, there's a good chance it will snowball and B will happen" also removes this fallacy.
I think it’s a simple post hoc fallacy. Stop signs proliferated afterBig Oil gained a degree of power over Congress, therefore Big Oil must be part of the cause.
The difference between Drive 55 and the stop signs is that Drive 55 was enacted by a single legislative act, and stop signs proliferate due to a combination of state code, municipal code, civil engineering practices and limited imagination. Traffic circles are currently proliferating just as easy, and reduce fuel consumption.
it has a name, but not as a fallacy. cui bono, "who benefits?" in the law is suggested as a good place to look (for suspects, for responsible parties) because there's motive.
I agree with the other commentor that this relates to conspiracy theories, but I find that conspiracy theories are where people go when they have no evidence to support their premise. In other words, the ratio of alleged to likely conspiracy theories is really bad for theorists.
Stop signs’ utility in shutting up squeaky wheels or appeasing anti-car agitators are a simpler and more direct explanation.
You basically need them to enforce pedestrian crossings.
I grew up in an older suburb that made judicious use of yield signs (give right-away to pedestrians AND vehicles). I remember being told as a kid to always give the right-of-way to cars and only cross when the intersection was clear - Smart advice from my parents, because cars had no issue zipping thru the intersection without slowing down while I stood at the corner waiting to cross.
Less upfront cost, more longterm cost. You can make a huge grid of streets and just stop sign all of the intersections and avoid any unpleasant calculations of who should have right of way. This way, for the past 70-80 years or so, developers have been able to just ctrl-c ctrl-v mindless designs over greater land areas than city planners can keep up with.
These aren’t related. Simple street patterns do not require stop signs per se. If you have a bunch of four-way intersections, potentially two ways can have yield signs and two ways can have right of way.
Maybe most of Europe. In Greece, my experience was that they seem to throw them everywhere, even if they tend to be largely ignored. For intersections where they really want you to stop, they’ll have two or three stop signs spaced maybe 40–50 meters apart leading up to the intersection. You know, for emphasis I guess.
When I lived in Hamburg in Germany, there was an arterial on my way to work where cars definitely _did not_ stop for pedestrians. The street was 2 lanes wide with an spot to stand in the middle.
I'm not sure I understand what you're saying, but the stop sign (around here) means you have to come to a full stop and yield to crossing traffic, which includes bikes, cars and other vehicles, but not pedestrians.
You are meant to yield at certain dedicated crossings without lights and you can’t negligently hit someone just because they didn’t use a crossing (jaywalking isn’t a crime either but there are some fast roads where people are not allowed to walk on). And obviously drivers are meant to be courteous towards pedestrians, especially where the space is more shared (eg suburban streets or some country roads), and this would generally mean yielding after some polite eye-contact-based negotiation.
America does seem to have an absolutely enormous number of stop signs. Here in the UK 99% of what would be a stop in the US is just an implicit yield - a road joining another road is a yield. Obviously it's a yield - you'd be mad not to yield - so no need for a sign.
That is like ... blowing my American mind. I'm imagining whole swathes of code in self driving cars that are just commented out before they deliver to the UK.
There are lots of rules that are implicit on European roads. You have to actually read the signs. And as an American, it really requires studying before attempting to drive there.
As an example, in Germany, the speed limit on 2-lane highways is (from memory, it's been 5 years) 100 kph. But when you enter a town, which is designated by a specific sign that tells you the name of the town, the speed limit drops to 50 kph. There is no sign that says "speed limit is now 50 kph." It is implicit from the sign saying you are entering that town. Upon leaving the town, there will be a "speed restriction removed" sign. This doesn't mean there's no speed limit, it means the speed restriction has been removed and your speed limit is back to 100 kph.
Yield or "give way" signs make tons of sense. Think of a small two lane road that crosses a four-lane highway. The cars on the larger road have the right of way and cars entering or crossing must give way/yield to that traffic. There's generally no need for a stop sign, but we as Americans are used to it and see it as the only way to do things.
I find the UK's road sign for "National Speed Limit Applies" to be surely one of the worst designed road signs in history.
Much like your German example, it exists solely to tell you the speed limit has changed. Rather than put a number on a sign and be done with it, its an inexplicable white circle with a black line across it!
What is the "National Speed Limit" you ask? Again it depends on where you are, and even what you are driving. The only advantage I can think of is they don't need to replace these signs should the limits be changed...
That part also exists in Germany. The 100kph on the "Landstrasse" - which does not mean two lane highway, it could simply be the road connecting two small towns that doesn't look much different from the road in town except for no houses on either side - only applies to cars. Trucks have an automatic limit of 80kph. That is sooo dumb! Lots and lots of accidents because cars get stuck behind trucks and get aggravated. Especially on one lane ones that have enough traffic to make passing almost impossible. And since this is Germany, most of these aren't straight like you might expect from the US. These are usually very meandering, which makes it real hard to pass those trucks.
And never mind the actual highways, where there's no speed limit unless posted. And trucks still can only go 80kph. So you have 2 lane Autobahn. Trucks at 80-99kph on the right lane. 90-200kph cars on the left lane. The trucks that go 80 will have a bunch of trucks that want to go 90 trying to pass them. Then add the ups and downs where even the 90kph truck that's passing will slow to 75. Even if you're only cruising at 150kph (actually a pretty nice cruising speed), if you come up on an "elephant race" as they call it behind a bend in the road it's not fun. This extends to 3 lane highways too. Just that now you actually have cars switching from the middle lane to the left lane, because one truck is passing another. So you have an 80kph truck on the right, 90kph truck on the middle lane and a 100kph car in the left lane and the 200kph Mercedes or BMW approaching from the rear.
Truck have a massively higher kinetic energy. Therefore they have different regulations. I really wouldn't want trucks driving around with 130km/h (let's not even speak about the environmental impact). The big issue with trucks in Germany is that Germany is a transit country and with just in time delivery freight trafic on the roads increased massively. So there are many more trucks on the road than originally planned for.
The weird thing is that in Germany you have these competing speeds that make driving worse for everyone. That 20kph difference is responsible for a lot of bad behavior on smaller roads. On the Autobahn the differences are even bigger, even if there's more space (a second lane) but then like you mentioned there is a lot of traffic.
In the US and Canada for example the speed limit is just the same. Everyone goes at 100kph in Canada, truck or no truck. While you have people speeding there as well obviously, everyone is sort of going at the same speed.
in NJ, everyone is going about the same speed, but way over the limit. people seem to be pretty good about staying out of the passing lane in light traffic.
in VA, everyone does seem to more or less go the speed limit.
in MD, it's utter chaos. you'll see a minivan going exactly the speed limit in the left lane, people passing it 10-20 mph over the limit, and wild people weaving in and out of exit lanes to pass everyone else at even higher speeds.
Another major part of the problem is that driving on highways and since 2018 also Bundesstraßen (basically, Landstraßen with regional importance) costs tolls, and truckers try to save toll wherever they can.
> I find the UK's road sign for "National Speed Limit Applies" to be surely one of the worst designed road signs in history.
No its not my friend.
Because it is only telling you something that you should already know if you have passed your Theory Test.
Namely that the National Speed Limit is the default state.
Anyone who has passed the Theory Test will know what the NSL is based on the road they are on and the vehicle they are driving. Its not difficult, you've only got to be able to tell the pretty darn obvious difference between a built-up area, single carriageway, dual carriageway and motorway (and whether a central reservation is present or not).
Which is why you only (typically) find NSL signs:
- in locations where the context may normally dictate otherwise (e.g. presence of street lights)
- where temporary limits are changing back to NSL (e.g. after motorway roadworks)
Don't overthink it. Its a lot easier to understand and a lot more sensible than you're making it out to be.
Right, but not all drivers operating a vehicle in the UK are required to pass a UK driving theory test. Virtually all foreign drivers can arrive, show up to a rental car place on their foreign documents and just drive out. While in the best case scenario a driver may have a UK licence and passed a corresponding theory test, this is not guaranteed. There's zero requirement to have sat that test for almost all foreign cars entering the UK via train and ferry too.
As a counter example, a UK person visiting the US would have almost zero difficulty understanding any of the speed signage, as they all incorporate the actual speed limits. Similarly, there is zero expectation you have passed the theory element of a US drivers licence. The US has roads with different speed limits for different vehicles too and still manages to get clear signage with numbers.
Good signage can be clear regardless of any tests, virtually all other speed signage in the UK incorporates a number. Speaking from experience, even those who have sat a theory test can often not really understand that sign or forget its meaning. There's not even any guarantee a licenced UK citizen has ever sat a theory test, given those who gained a UK licence before the introduction of the theory test in 1996 have generally never been required to sit one. The pre 1996 "theory" element was some random questions from your tester during the practical.
The standard of driving in the US is also appalling because its basically seen as a god given right that you should be able to have a driving license, and so minimal barriers are put in place to get one.
I also know many UK peeps who learnt to drive before 1996 and never have I heard one of them bitch and moan about "how stupid the NSL sign is".
We all know the US is a bit of a nanny state and everyone is constantly covering their backsides to avoid getting sued, and that's probably why the US has explicit speed limit signs splattered at every opportunity. Because if the US had the NSL system, some smart-alec would have a crash and then open up a lawsuit because they were too dumb to figure out which of the four types of road they were on.
I'm sorry. I'll happily bitch and moan about other aspects of UK roads (e.g. not-so-smart motorways). But NSL ? Nah mate ... it makes sense and you know it. ;-)
As you can see from this link, most European countries use the "NSL" sign in some form. It's expected that drivers find what those limits are when they cross a border. There are signs at all land borders showing the limit, also on that page.
> Rather than put a number on a sign and be done with it, its an inexplicable white circle with a black line across it!
> […]
> it depends on […] what you are driving.
If it depends on what you’re driving they can’t put a single number on it. I would guess putting multiple numbers on wouldn’t be an improvement.
The USA sometimes has this on freeways where you’ll see a large 70 and below it TRUCKS 55.
Most other classes aren’t listed.
Likely the German way is better as the real law everywhere is “do not drive faster than is safe for conditions” but that is a number that changes day to day.
The sign has that design because it used to mean the end of the speed limit - you'll also hear it referred to as "deristricted" although that hasn't been accurate for many years. Rather than spend a vast amount of money replacing the signs and potentially also missing some and resulting in driver confusion, the National Speed Limit was introduced.
My comparison is driving in the US is mostly stateless and context free. While in Europe, you must know from context what type of road you are on, and also remember the current state you should be from the signs you saw earlier.
I find driving in the US easier because of that. I just which there was roundabout instead of stop signs everywhere.
>> My comparison is driving in the US is mostly stateless and context free.
Understanding speeds, perhaps, but driving? There are many things that require context and state like the rightmost lane becoming an exit lane requiring action to continue straight ahead. You have left turns from right lanes in some states. There are different U-turn laws in adjacent states. Stop signs permitting right turns without stops in some states through tiny exception text.
GP's comment makes more sense if you consider driving safely/legally and actually navigating to be separate problems. in general, this is a good way to look at it; misunderstanding right-of-way is much more serious than taking a wrong (but legal) turn.
there are some cases where there is an implied state/town speed limit, but other than that, all the information you need to drive safely/legally is on signage in front of you or a hundred feet back.
Everywhere I've driven in the US with HOV lanes, also has the restricted lane(s) separated from the unrestricted lanes by a single or double solid line and the lanes themselves have a diamond painted in them every X number of feet.
Even if you aren't able to read the entire sign, there are other clues that should alert you to the fact that you might not want to be in that lane.
The question of interest is not merely "is this an HOV lane" but "can I use it at this time" and "is there anything the sign says other than the usual stuff that I would need to know". You're supposed to read all road signs, and only after reading can you be sure that their information is redundant.
Yet HOV lanes can be minimum 2 people most of the time, minimum 4 people during certain hours. If you're in a car with 2 people, you want to know if you're allowed to use the HOV lane or not.
It's admittedly (probably) not from Colorado, yeah. Though the important part you need to read is really the hours, since the other stuff doesn't tend to vary. Which they helpfully used a smaller font for, to make sure so you don't forget to squint at the most relevant part.
It's definitely distracting to have so much text, since you're still supposed to quickly read all of it, just in case it might say something other than what you expect. Not sure how that's supposed to work at 65+ mph.
Ehhh. There's reading text, and understanding symbols.
For example, the first time you see a sign in the UK denoting whether you or the oncoming lane has right of way through a narrow spot the meaning may not be totally obvious.
For what is worth the same happens in Romania and, judging by other people commenting in here, in most of Europe. Around my parts of the continent (Bucharest) a stop sign is in place only if you really, really need to stop for the safety of traffic (usually to ensure better visibility, you see the perpendicular traffic better while you're at a complete stop).
More exactly the "need to stop for ensuring safety" has come first, followed by the Stop sign itself, while in the US it looks like the Stop sign has come first, no matter the actual "neediness" related to traffic safety.
An extremely-well-traveled travel photo-blogger I read sometimes, who has a thing for signs (among other things, like fire hydrants), noted that only one or two other countries in the world come anywhere close to the US when it comes to posting rules on things. He framed it as practically the defining feature of American cities and towns: signs with rules on them, everywhere.
I think that’s because their driving license tests are so easy to pass.
It seems they can’t assume drivers recognize a “no U-turn” sign, even though there’s a clear similarity with other signs (round with a red edge and a diagonal red line means forbidden, black arrows mean driving directions)
Weirdly, they do assume their population and tourists can understand written English when passing such signs at speed in a car and even know what a ped xing is.
I agree. Signage is out of control in most of the US. On the roads, but not just on the roads. It's visual noise, often redundant or stating what already is apparent, and I think it's stress-inducing. It's probably related to the litigiousness of American society. If someone got hurt, and there wasn't a sign telling him to not do the clearly dangerous or stupid thing he did, a lawsuit will be filed.
I had a driving examiner try to fail me for that very offense when I took my test long ago. I was in a neighborhood, on the vertical part of a T intersection with no stop sign present. I slowed until I had a clear view that there was no traffic approaching from either direction, then proceeded.
I complained when I returned. Asked to be shown where that rule was present in the state's official driver's manual. It wasn't in there. I passed.
Same in Turkey, and I presume through most of continental Europe. Most stop signs were removed in late 90s and converted into either implicit yields (i.e. nothing, ‘don’t be stupid’ rule) or traffic lights. Right now they’re trialling allowing California style allowed right turn at red lights.
> California style allowed right turn at red lights.
How are these different from other 'right turns on red' in the US ?
I find turning on red to be a pretty bad idea, because Americans rarely stop fully and look out for pedestrians. I think a majority of pedestrian accidents occurs on turn on reds/stops .
>I find turning on red to be a pretty bad idea, because Americans rarely stop fully and look out for pedestrians. I think a majority of pedestrian accidents occurs on turn on reds/stops.
"Americans rarely stop fully and look out for pedestrians"
Rarely is being heavily abused in this statement. It's just not true. Otherwise pedestrian fatalities would be vastly higher than they are. Additionally, regional driving habits differ drastically. People in Colorado and California drive far more aggressively than they do in Iowa or even more densely populated areas on the east coast, where policing is far more rigorous.
I live in suburbia where there are few pedestrians. When I am out running, I would guesstimate that only about 20% of drivers actually stop before turning right on red. About 90% of drivers, even the ones that stopped, also never even glance in the direction they are turning, looking only for traffic coming from the left. By the time they have starting looking right, they have already crossed through the crosswalk.
The only reason there aren't more injuries to pedestrians is that there aren't very many to begin with and those that are on foot operate on the assumption that every driver is out to kill them.
The US, for various reasons that primarily relate to privatized healthcare and a proliferation of lawyers, had absurdly high rates of lawsuits and liability around driving. Most road signs here are excessive for the purposes of making it as straightforward as possible to assign liability to a driver in the event of an acccident.
A prime example of this is the "No U-Turn" signs all over the US. People make U-turns at these spots all the time. The sign is really just there to ensure that any accident resulting from said U-turn is always, no matter what, the turner's fault in a legal sense.
I'd be far happier if we were just allowed to ignore the signs and have strict liability for the consequences if we screw up doing so. Being subject to fines and harassment by law enforcement is what I don't like.
a) That's possible depending on how you quantify ability because average is influenced by outliers.
b) Is that supposed to be a rebuttal or something? I think "do whatever but strict liability if you F up" would be fine even for average and below average drivers. That's mostly how things already work in practice.
Being allowed to turn right on red is the law in every US state. The only real exception is that it's banned in a few downtowns and, obviously, wherever a sign says otherwise.
One counterexample, right turn on red is not allowed anywhere in any borough of NYC. And outer Queens/Brooklyn/Staten Island are indistinguishable (to me) from the rest of Long Island (suburb). (i.e. not just downtown/busy areas of NYC)
Right turn on red really doesn't belong anywhere where people could be on the street. Drivers turning red will often pull forward into the crosswalk and there may be a walk signal.
In a right turn on green scenario, the driver mainly needs to be looking for pedestrians crossing and they will be crossing a different direction. In a right turn on red, their primary focus is on cars, limiting their attention on pedestrians. It also encourages creeping out into the crosswalk, blocking people from crossing on a signal.
That makes sense. Being European I’m often annoyed at not being allowed to turn right on red. Allowing it at non-pedestrian intersections would perhaps be a fair compromise.
Yes, NYC is not just pragmatically anti-car (which to some extent it needs to be), it is also ideologically anti-car, and that manifests in stupid rules like that.
I’m not a huge fan of right-turn-on-red but one thing I don’t often seen brought up is that right-turn-on-green is problematic as well, for this very reason. When your light (to go forward) turns green, the pedestrian crossing on your right often also turns green, which means there are now pedestrians trying to cross your path. It’s definitely better because you’re only have to focus on pedestrians and not traffic, but “green=go” is a thing that has led several cars to almost hit me at street crossings.
Better than right turn on green, where the same thing occurs. With right turn on red, cars must stop before turning. Furthermore, cars are not permitted to turn if there are pedestrians crossing.
How is that California-style? That's the general rule in USA/Canada (not sure about Mexico). Some dense cities like New York and Montreal forbid right-turns on red city-wide, but those are the exception.
There's a belief that stop signs will slow traffic. Instead, they'll often result in people flooring it between stops, making up for lost time or whatever.
Other traffic calming measures do more to slow drivers down and improve safety while potentially making the entire drive faster, or at least more pleasant and efficient due to a steady speed.
I think we're starting to recognize that, but it's a lot easier to toss up another sign than to move a curb, and stop signs are seen as less of an "anti-car" measure.
Stopping and start every block also burns more fuel, increases pollution (cars emit most when accelerating), increases brake and tire wear, and makes drivers more frustrated and aggressive.
They exist because of the usual bureaucratic CYA risk-avoidance. "We have to do something, this is something" and "If it saves just one life" and all that, even though the vast majority of stop signs never will. Or even the cumulative man-hours lost by stopping exceeds that one life.
I find it’s more of a convenient way for cynical or buffoonic politicians or bureaucrats to shut up squeaky wheels.
Nearly every last squeaky wheel requesting a stop sign is wanting a solution to something much more complex. Even though an unwarranted stop sign can’t solve the problem, it’s the cheapest and fastest way to solve the problem, so it’s chosen.
When your roads are laid out in a neat grid, like many US cities and suburbs, a lack of stop signs encourages you to treat residential streets like shortcuts to avoid traffic lights. People who live in those residential areas don't want a ton of cars cutting through their neighborhood and would prefer that those cars took the main streets. One way to make it unattractive to drive through residential streets is to put a stop sign at every corner.
When I first moved to Seattle, the lack of stop signs in most residential neighborhoods blew my mind! But when I started biking to work, being able to just look both ways and breeze through without stopping was amazing.
Not sure if Seattle is still like this or if it was confined to specific neighborhoods (I lived in Leschi until 2018).
This is common in a lot of Seattle neighborhoods, but the custom doesn’t extend beyond the city limits. For the most part it just works, but when I’m in a car with someone not from the city I always need to inform the driver or they just expect right of way. I lived near one of these intersections and personally witnessed two collisions over ten years. Neither were serious. I think these intersections largely work as a custom, save for the people not already accustomed.
The other thing I love about Seattle is that in a lot of places you could park on either side of the street facing either direction. Another one of those weird customs that people just seemed to go with
It's still very common outside of the cores of highly urbanized neighborhoods. I generally like it, but sometimes the visibility isn't as well-maintained as it should be.
Portland has some neighborhoods like this with uncontrolled intersections. They also allow cars to park all the way up to the curb, so it becomes a game of go and pray since you often can't see cross-traffic until you have already entered the intersection.
I've been saying this for a long time too. The VAST majority of stop-signs in the US should be replaced by yield signs. Also roundabouts are far superior, even many 4-way light intersections could be replaced with them.
In my European experience roundabouts are better for cars safety, worse for bicycle safety (cars are driven closer to bikes), use up more land, increment gas consumption (almost stop and then go vs just go). The latter point could be debated because it's worse for the cars on the main road, better for the ones on the small ones.
There is no contest. Roundabouts are better than silly multi-way stops any day of the week.
There are hundreds of reasons why. But I'll just name the most obvious one that you've missed.
Traffic volume.
Multi-way stops just kill traffic throughput.
Its a hard fact. You make each vehicle stop.
Meanwhile roundabouts can safely and efficiently move staggering amounts of traffic. Want to move more traffic ? Add an extra lane or two.
P.S. As for the bicycle saftey...
Historically yes, but only to a degree, because I'd argue that if you can't manage to avoid hitting a bicycle on a roundabout then you probably should not be driving because you are most likely also committing lots of other dangerous driving offences elsewhere.
Going forward however, it should be stressed that a lot more attention is being paid to cyclist safety, both in terms of further re-enforcing driver awareness (i.e. more prominent in driver training and examination) but also in terms of vehicle design (especially HGVs) and roundabout design.
I could also argue that with a multi-way stop, perhaps especially at night or in inclement weather or where HGVs are at play, that your cyclist might not be immune to death or injury.
Multi-lane roundabouts are problematic. If you have to change lanes in a busy roundabout it can be difficult to find a gap or have someone let you over. And if you're on an "inner" lane you will clearly have to cross the outer lane at some point to get off of the roundabout. I'm not talking about roundabouts that have a special lane for people turning right, which is helpful, but roundabouts that have two or more lanes in the main circle.
> Meanwhile roundabouts can safely and efficiently move staggering amounts of traffic.
I don't find this to be accurate--at least in the US and in my limited experience in the UK. In computer terms, roundabouts don't guarantee progress under contention.
Roundabouts seem to work when there is semi-continuous, medium-level amounts of traffic. They are better than stop signs, better than unsensored signals, and probably comparable to sensored traffic signals (which are more expensive).
However, once the traffic becomes high, roundabouts are TERRIBLE. Stop signs and controlled intersections at least guarantee some progress while someone may sit at a roundabout entrance almost indefinitely since "give way to traffic on the roundabout" is the normal rule. This is particularly bad when you are entering a roundabout between the most popular inlet and the most popular outlet.
I think you need to spend a bit more time in the UK !
Take Hyde Park Corner for example. A bit of an extreme example as it is a super-busy roundabout. I will grant you that its not one where you will make smooth progress during peak rush-hour (outside of peak it works perfectly though).
There are also other good (and less extreme) examples along the secondary routes out of Heathrow (i.e. along Bath Road and Great West Road).
There's no way in hell you could replace any of the above with a US-style multi-way stop and achieve the same throughput of traffic.
Roundabouts work so well because you can have that magical combination of vehicles already established on the roundabout and also adding new vehicles all the time.
Roundabouts fall apart when one road is much busier and dominates it, and nobody else can get in. Happened to me once and I was there waiting to get in for at least 5 minutes until I just forced my way in.
Roundabouts would use less gas compared to stop signs or lights. A car is going to use the most fuel when it goes from stopped to moving. A roundabout will reduce the amount of cars that have to come to a complete stop, unlike a stop sign or light where stopping is mandatory.
>In my European experience roundabouts are better for cars safety
Correct - roundabouts reduce traffic fatalities in intersections quite signficantly.
>worse for bicycle safety (cars are driven closer to bikes)
I think this probably depends on design - if cyclists have a separated path with a raised crossing, then they are likely safer than intersections.
>use up more land,
Arguably true.
>increment gas consumption (almost stop and then go vs just go). The latter point could be debated because it's worse for the cars on the main road, better for the ones on the small ones.
Roundabouts generally replace signalled intersections, and compared to those, roundabouts are probably better (slow down/yield vs full speed/full stop).
At least in the Dutch roundabouts I’ve seen that people hold up as a standard, bicycles are not supposed to take the lane but instead have a separated path along the perimeter.
I think the grandparent comment is also coming from the US, where all-way stop intersections are extremely common.
Usually not. Bicycle roads are a pain if the road they run along has many intersections and roundabouts. You loose so much time and you don't have an engine to go back to speed. I usually stay on the road but I'm doing at least 25 km/h. Families or people with low saddles usually do half that speed and bike lanes are good for them.
Yes. The Netherlands have standalone bicycle paths as the standard. Not a line on the sidewalk, not a lane on the road, but a completely separate path that is designed to avoid both pedestrians and cars.
As more roundabouts have appeared in my boring flyover city in the last decade (from ~none to quite a few) I have started wondering what it's doing to my tire balance and suspension.
I have a hard time wrapping my head around this. I can understand removing stop signs in some parking lots, for example, but I have a hard time imagining removing the ones at cross street intersections, even if they're converted to yields. When people talk about removing stop signs, I imagine they'd include streets like [1], and I don't understand how that's supposed to work. Could you link to a good example of a street or two on Google Street View that is an actual public street (not a parking lot or such), and where speed limits are (say) over 15mph, where you think removing stop signs would be a good idea? Maybe my imagination is just lacking but I don't see what people are thinking of.
One road gets a diamond priority sign, the other gets an inverted triangle yield sign.
For example, the road going up and down the slope would get priority signs and the road going across the slope would get yield signs. Actually, in this case they might leave it with stop signs, because the visibility is quite bad.
It's not anti-stop sign. Stop signs absolutely have their place. The opinion is against the misuse of stop-signs, where other forms of traffic control are more effective.
Unfortunately a grid system lends itself to 4-way stop signs because two roads at a right angle are equal. In a tree-shaped road system (like in much of the world) you have a main road and a side road. The side road gives way.
Same here. No idea what the hell this thread is about. I've never thought there were too few stop signs or too many. They have never been a problem in my life. To me this is like having a strong opinion on the thickness of a street curb or something. Weird thread.
There are places that just have way fewer stop signs. Seattle has a lot of local residential street intersections with no stop signs (or yield signs either). When I was living in Munich, same deal.
Like the boiling lobster in the pot, they are a huge problem in your life, but you don't know it because you've never experienced life without them.
Come to a country that doesn't have a single 4 way stop and instead has roundabouts (and people that know how to use them). I drive clear across town through 40+ intersections without stopping once. So does everyone else.
Are you aware which website you’re on? Having strong opinions on esoteric topics is a HN mainstay. Also as a non-American driving in the US made me think about a lot of things I wouldn’t otherwise consider. (Yes you have too many stop signs)
Technically, you don't have to stop if the primary road is clear. In practice, you will end up stopping, so it's exactly like a US 2-way stop without the fear of getting ticketed should you roll through it during off-hours.
Ah, we have that in the US as a yield sign. The problem is a huge portion of stop signs have horrible visibility so you have to stop and creep up to see if you need to yield first.
Perhaps that depends on the context a little. My city has removed some lights in my neighborhood, in favor of 4-way stops, and traffic is much calmer. No more the gunning it to try to make it through the intersection when it's green or orange. It feels so much safer when on foot or biking.
Compared to what it was before, it's a real improvement.
I love all-way stops on intersections where all roads carry broadly equal traffic. They're just so efficient, and very low-tech. But I hate them on unequal intersections, where a yield on the smaller road makes more sense.
I've seen fairly commonly in developing suburban scenarios something like "a through street with a new -- but very low-traffic -- intersection with a cross street". People are accustomed to driving fast on the through street, increasing the risks of the conflict at the intersection, but 99% of the time there is no conflict.
The easy solution that's often chosen is to add a stop sign to these intersections, but this tends to result in largely-unnecessary stopping and starting, which then tends to increase the number of conflicts (because the traffic on the through street tends to congest at the new stop rather than passing quickly through it).
A better solution would address the nature of the risk -- speed -- more directly. Traffic calming techniques like narrowing the road, or deflection (manufactured bends in the road or speed humps) would improve outcomes for all road users more than a stop sign that creates congestion (and therefore conflict).
I mean all stop signs. I have yet to see a single city where the vast majority of stop-sign-controlled intersections couldn’t have been better served with yield signs.
Get rid of the vast majority of stop signs, and you’ve eliminated a huge amount of the problem this law seeks to solve.
I can’t imagine any of the stop signs here in Los Angeles being able to be replaced by yield signs.
They are almost all 4 way stops, with regular traffic in all directions. If you made it an uncontrolled intersection, or added a yield sign, the road with the yield sign would never get a chance to go.
In fact, there are a number of places along my route to my daughters school where I take a slightly longer way to avoid the intersections without a 4 way stop because I would end up sitting forever trying to turn if I went to one of them.
> I can’t imagine any of the stop signs here in Los Angeles being able to be replaced by yield signs.
That's because the roads, as they currently are, were designed for stop signs. Removing those stop signs is going to usually involve changing the roads a bit too.
You wouldn't necessarily need more space, but even if you did US streets are already so wide that you can generally apply road diets to them and still get better trafic flow out of them.
You may have identified some warranted stops. Congratulations! In my area, the vast majority of stop signs can be replaced by yield signs, to broad societal benefit.
> I have yet to see a single city where the vast majority of stop-sign-controlled intersections couldn’t have been better served with yield signs.
So I was giving an example of a city where that wasn’t the case. I never said all stop signs are necessary, I was only disputing the point that most stop signs in ALL cities aren’t necessary.
In cities where there are streets - collectors - arterials you can remove almost all stop signs because the streets see little traffic.
But cities like LA have grown so much that even if they had that at one point effectively every street is a parallel collector and so the traffic volumes are too high.
The “rolling stop” is just proof that most intersections could be unsigned, and then use stop and yield to alert to specifically dangerous ones.
If you rarely or never saw a stop sign, one appearing would be an awakening.
Is there data that you've read on this to back up your claims?
I know there's a push to replace stop lights and signs with traffic circles. But I haven't heard the same for residential stop signs. I've just read that they prefer to eliminate 4-ways stops because 3-ways are much safer..
> Is there data that you've read on this to back up your claims?
There’s plenty of it. If you want to start from the pollution angle, consider the pollution caused by a stop/start rather than steady-speed cruise through the intersection. Enormous difference.
> Is there data that you've read on this to back up your claims?
Many other countries get by with far fewer stop signs and have far fewer traffic fatalities. Not sure if there's a causative relationship there, but it doesn't seem to be hurting.
No cross traffic is the thinking, so the most dangerous situation - someone blowing through the stop sign at full speed - is less likely to be an issue, because it can only happen in on the road that's the top of the T, and since bottom of the T traffic always needs to stop, they are more likely to notice traffic that may blow through the sign.
If you look at modern American suburban streets, you'll see this idea in action. Most intersections are 3-way vs the grid layout common in older areas.
Not sure how that would work where I am from… there are so many cars, the one direction that didn’t have the stop sign would be constantly full and the other three directions would just sit there.
An intersection that busy should just be a traffic light though. All of these other measures are for managing flow at intersections where natural gaps exist and can be leveraged.
Unnecessary red turn arrows are my biggest complaint about driving in the bay area. This, coupled with multi minute light cycles greatly reduces intersection utilization, and doubles or triples all the commutes I've had. (East Bay, San Francisco, and South Silicon Valley don't have this issue.)
Stop signs seem to be the current solution to roads that promote unsafe/fast driving. It's been demonstrated that narrow, non-straight roads promote slower, safer driving. This is the opposite of how roads have been built in most US suburbs for years.
there's a similar issue with lanes. i grew up in a county with twisty mountain roads, and even in the flat valley areas roads tended to be more like a lane and a half wide rather than two. none of these roads had lanes painted and it was fine. if you saw someone coming and the road was too narrow, you both slowed down and eased past each other, and it's much safe to drive in the middle of the road on the twisty mountains, you just have to be situationally aware of oncoming traffic.
someone from the state saw and freaked out, and lanes were painted. they were too narrow and not safe, but they had lanes!
I'm constantly amazed at the amount of bad engineering traffic engineers come up with. For example, there's a street near downtown Denver that has a stop sign that has a blind 270 degree off-highway-ramp with no stop that racers frequent. You're expected to keep an eye on every other direction and hope you don't get blind sided while pausing at the stop sign by someone going over 100mph off the highway from someone you have to extremely uncomfortably look behind you and around cement blockers for.
That’s not a defense of civil engineering culture, which tends to farm lots of free money from unnecessary work with little value.
The stop signs everywhere are one example. Another I would cite is the end of my street, which was ADA compliant with a modern crosswalk, signals, etc. Unfortunately, the crosswalk lines and stop lines wore off, but the city DPW cannot just re-paint them… they need to spend ~$100k on a traffic study.
Would you feel the same if your child was killed at an intersection?
The biggest problem with driving in my opinion is that everyone is in a useless rush. Speeding, rolling through stop signs. Putting more wear on the vehicle, consuming more fuel, and adding more risk, all for the sake of getting home literally just a few minutes earlier. And once home what do most do? The same thing they were doing in the car: sitting on their ass.
Stop signs often are placed mainly as a reaction to a tragedy, as a speed control device (neighborhood residents complain about speed, so the city lowers it, then they complain some more so the city installs more stop signs), or as a device to give police officers probably cause for stopping drivers.
Speed control devices should be used instead, such as using curbs to narrow the street at intersections to just one lane's width.
Sure, they are not ideal. They are there because changing road design for safety is expensive and not something that engineers in the US seem to understand how to do. Removing stop signs doesn't magically solve anything. Road design needs to be changed to keep things safe.
It sure does! Look at all the harms caused by unwarranted stop signs in my original post. Removing the vast majority of stop signs removes those harms, and since they couldn’t have solved any problem in the first place, their removal causes no novel, long term harm.
How are intersections reduced? Closing them off with concrete blocks to create dead end streets? Creating more cul-de-sacs?
I certainly don't want a world where every residential street is a windy suburban-style affair that goes nowhere. That just entrenches car culture and makes it impossible to run efficient mass transit.
Effective is stopping the cars at points but not the people - Queen Anne in Seattle has many streets that become stairs at points because it’s too steep.
You can also have portions of the road that block cars but allow transit as necessary.
Cars should be discouraged and forced to go the long way around as it doesn’t harm them much, and gives an advantage to walking.
This intersection is big enough that you can just put a big concrete half-ball or a flowerbed in the middle, put up a bunch of signs that show how to use it, maybe add some plastic lane separators that ease cars into a right turn. That's it, a roundabout.
This. I've seen a few small ones in residential areas in California and they prevent speeding because you need to slow down as you cannot go straight but still allow flow faster than stopping 5 times.
One division installed them badly as a retrofit and discovered they needed to add some really big rocks as people were just driving straight OVER the roundabout.
Maybe I need my mind opened but I can't imagine the space requirement for every side street intersection to become a traffic circle. Surely you're referring to intersections only between arterials?
American streets are very wide. You kill parking near the intersection and you can add a small “roundabout” which is basically a diamond in the street preventing straight through.
Where there's not much space, you can just paint the circle [1].
I think that one probably exists because people are going south and east (to the two main roads), so it's not clear that either direction should have priority. The junction looks more-or-less the same size as the crossroads to the north. (Which, incidentally, has no signs, just road markings to indicate which road has priority.)
For interest, move slightly south east to see the large roundabout between two main roads, then follow the A4540 north to see two more.
Drivers in the US are so bad that painting a circle will do nothing. The physical roundabout with curbs and landscaping near me gets driven straight through a couple of times a year. If it won't destroy your car, American drivers will disregard it when it is inconvenient.
Driving over a painted ("mini") roundabout could lead to a £50 fine if it's spotted by a police officer in Britain, although in many cases (when there's no other traffic) I think they'd just stop the driver and warn them not to do it again.
(Driving over one in a bus, lorry or other large vehicle that can't make a tight turn is allowed.)
Driving over a normal roundabout with curbs and landscaping is unheard of, there isn't a specific fine. The kerbs are usually tall enough that it risks damaging the vehicle. I think it would be considered fairly serious¹, as it shows either a serious lack of attention to the road, or a complete disregard for the rules.
¹ i.e. you get a fine and 3-6 penalty points on your driving licence, which increases your insurance cost. If you get 12 points you lose the licence and have to retake the driving test.
The main point of a stop sign is to control intersections that objectively need the stop to permit safe traffic flow.
We are instead seeing unwarranted stop signs proliferate like rabbits, justified by things they can’t do, like slow or calm traffic.
On top of that, we’re ignoring the problems _caused by_ unwarranted stop signs, including crashes that wouldn’t otherwise happen, increased noise, increased pollution (especially small particles in the stop sign’s vicinity), higher speeds that are induced after the stop sign (drivers make up for time lost at the stop), and the broader consequences of reducing credibility of traffic regulations overall (people aren’t stupid, and when they are conditioned to that stop signs are mostly pointless, the conditioning bleeds over to the whole regime of traffic regulations).
Stop engineering malpractice, ditch most stop signs, and problem solved!