Seattle has a lot of “uncontrolled intersections” in residential areas with no stop or yield sign. And, of course, lots of “4 way stops.” I prefer one street having the right of way and the other street having to stop or at least yield.
Oh, it’s definitely possible to fail an American driving test. I’ve known plenty of people who have.
One thing is that the UK will have roundabouts in some situations that have four-way stops in the US. There are far more stop signs in the US than in the UK, but by the same token there are far fewer roundabouts.
Yeah, that’s the kind of intersection that would in no circumstances at all have a stop sign over here. There’s LOADS of visibility in all directions and no excuse whatsoever for crashing there.
Here is a not particularly atypical “yield” on the Isle of Man (and weirdly enough the Isle of Man is actually stricter about stop signs than the UK).
Most stop signs need less visibility than that - you will find if you trace the google maps streetview forward you can see enough to pull out (obviously you can’t see much from that view) and there is no reason at all to STOP there - you can’t blow through that at infinity mph (there is no speed limit on any of those roads) or even 15mph. But there’s no reason to stop so why make drivers do so?
There is a fundamental difference in “intersection-behavior laws” between the USA and at least one European country I know of (I’ve no idea how it works elsewhere).
In the Netherlands, when you approach an intersection with no stop-lights or signs (or one with flashing lights) you must always yield to the driver in the cross-street that’s to the right of you. We don’t have any law like that in the U.S. so without stop-signs there would be pandemonium. I guess we could use yield signs, but we would still have to post them at every intersection.
I think it’s less confusing (and saves money on signage) when it’s always the same rule regardless of intersection.
For reference, here is the kind of place we use a stop sign. Note the very high hedges/walls on both sides.
That’s the ase in several european countries but not over here. It’s actually quite a weird rule when you are driving in France or whatever and someone flies out of a junction between your route national and something that barely qualifies as a road. I can’t say I like it. In France it is overruled with signs rather than flashing lights.
Stop, in the name of love, before you break my heart…
In many/most states in the US, that rule applies when two or more cars come to a stop simultaneously at a 4-way stop. So we’re familiar with it, just in a different implementation.
Indeed…I failed my first drivers test.
How did I fail it?
I blew through a stop sign.
Heh, I nearly failed by blowing through an uncontrolled intersection.
I live on a long side street that’s crossed by many lesser side streets. When my family moved here back in the 50s there were no stop signs on this street, but all the side streets had them. Because of this cars would race down the entire length of our street, causing fairly frequent accidents. And there was drag racing. At some point in the 60s all the intersections became 4-way stops. Damn few accidents now. Of course it’s a pain in the ass to have to stop for every single side street, but there are alternate ways to get from A to B.
If the stop signs were replaced by yield signs, too many people would ignore them.
I’d say two things:
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In non-city driving, American drivers go very fast and there are often inadequate sight lines. Stopping is necessary or no one would ever get across the intersection in the crossing direction.
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“Yield” is uncommon-to-unheard of in these situations. Yield signs are used primarily to indicate who has the right of way when traffic going in the same direction is merging.
The point is not that there’s visibility. The point is that without a sign, there’s no rule that says that cars need to watch for oncoming traffic.
The point is that without the signs, people died with distressing regularity.
I don’t know about other states, but that’s basically the law in Ohio. It’s just something that rarely comes up.
Hey, the county[sup]1[/sup] I live in just got its sixth[sup]2[/sup] roundabout[sup]3[/sup] this year. At the rate we’re going, we may reach the density of roundabouts in the UK in oh, a couple hundred thousand years…
I’ll be the roundabout
The words will make you out ‘n’ out
[sup]1[/sup] Washington County, Oregon, if you’re interested.
[sup]2[/sup] Sixth, as far as I know. There may be a few others.
[sup]3[/sup] I’m talking about real roundabouts, not those “traffic circles” formed by placing a circular obstruction in the middle of an otherwise unchanged intersection. Those are just traffic calming devices and we have some of those too.
This is an important point. At a lot of these intersections, without some kind of signage or traffic lights, the traffic in the low-density road would either never be able to get through the intersection or they would constantly have to brave pulling into traffic with cross-traffic going at 70 m.p.h.
If there’s no stop sign at the intersection, the drivers on the more heavily traveled road take it to mean, “I must never stop or slow down for cross-traffic.”