Here in Madison we have intersections marked like I haven’t seen anywhere else. My lease favorite are those with 3-way stop signs – yes, one vehicle coming from one direction has the ROW over all others. There are tiny little note signs under the big STOP that say traffic from (right or left on oncoming) does not stop. They are easy to overlook, and if you don’t know about these “special” intersections, you are screwed.
We even had one T-intersection where ther traffic across the T both had to stop, and the traffic coming in from the base – which had to turn – didn’t have to stop. I’d never seen that elsewhere either, but it was finally changed just a few months ago to an all-stop.
In my town we have them spanning railroad tracks. Frontage roads on either side of the tracks, a three-way stop on each intersection, and cars going across the tracks always have right-of-way. It gets bad when people at the intersection really want to go and pay no attention to the car coming across the railroad tracks.
Yeah, if you know about it, no problem. It’s the people who don’t – they stop, and proceed, and expect everybody else to do the same. I’ve seen a lot of screeching brakes and near misses, but no actual contact so far.
We used to have one at the end of a bridge, traffic coming off the bridge had right-of-way over the other directions. That’s been fixed now. Near my wife’s grandmother’s in Connecticut there’s a three-way intersection like you describe; I almost caused an accident the first time I encountered it because I had been stopped and started to go without realizing one direction had no stop sign, the other driver must’ve been a local, they were ready for it and just waved it off.
There’s one in Eldersburg Md. The rational, according to a longtime resident I talked to is that during the winter, people coming up the hill don’t have to stop, so they don’t get stuck or slide back down the hill. It is a fairly steep hill.
Not too far from where I grew up is Appleton, Wisconsin’s infamous Lawe Street Hill. The intersection at the top is a 3-way stop, with traffic coming up the steep hill NOT stopping.
As the linked article explains, the intersection was part of a detour because a major bridge is being reconstructed, but traffic has been restricted in that area because of concerns about increased detour traffic and the hill getting icy in the winter. It’s treacherous enough under normal conditions.
I have seen a lot of those type of intersections in New England. I don’t know if this is unique or not but I actually got to see a similar one of those intersections described develop and it might explain some of them.
I live on the outskirts of a recently re-re-redeveloped area of Tampa and this occurred over the course of about 2 years. The intersection started as just a 90 with no stop signs, then the leg turning left got a stop sign in preparation for a small condo complex to be built with the entrance across from the stop sign. Then a large condo complex was put in surrounding the new complex. They put in a long driveway that headed straight from the direction of the no stop side then turned left into the complex. Yet another complex was put in on the other side of the driveway. The driveway coming straight out from the road became a named extension of the existing road now forming a T intersection. The former driveway arm and the base of the T have stop signs but not the arm coming in to turn right or going straight ACROSS the intersection.
In this case it was just really crappy planning for development but I can imagine crappy planning occurring often enough to end up in a lot of places.
Apparently one of the locals got upset with being woken up all the time (by horns and screeching tires) and just hung a stop sign from the tree (the stop sign was stolen from one of the new condo complexes). The county/city finally put up a real stop sign after a large fire rerouted rush hour traffic through this intersection.
I can think of one here in Maine in or near the town of Buxton. Route 22 eastbound is the only traffic that doesn’t have to stop, and they have to make a left turn to remain on Route 22. Traffic on Route 22 westbound has to make a right turn to remain on the route, but they do have to stop. The other two roads that meet there are town roads, not numbered state highways. To add to the thrill, visibility from the stop sign on one of the town roads is rather poor, so it’s hard to see the non-stopping traffic on Rte 22 eastbound.
The only one I can think of here is a shopping mall. There is a stubby road off of the main drag that ends at the ring road around the mall, and you have to turn right or left. There’s no stop sign for it (the stem of a T) because they don’t want traffic backing up enough to foul the main drag. The two arms of the T have stop signs, w/ a big sign underneath, “Cross Traffic Does Not Stop”