Around these parts of Connecticut, they like 4-way stops. Or 3-way stops or 5-way stops. If they can put up a stop sign at every corner in sight, they will. They like them so much they’ll even go though the effort and expense of putting up a traffic light, then make it blink red in every direction. True story from my town.
Contrast this to where I grew up, in New Jersey. They don’t really believe in using 4-way stops there. They follow this logic… If there is an intersection, they pick the more heavily trafficked street and it has an unobstructed path. If it’s a toss-up, they still pick one. If there’s too much traffic, they put up a light – begrudgingly.
That’s a pretty big difference in attitude for two states so close. And this strikes me as the kind of little detail I wouldn’t notice as a tourist.
What’s it like in your area? If they don’t have 4-way stops in your area, do you freak out when you’re someplace they do?
Man, I’ve posted about this twice before and I’m still mad so I’ll post it again.
When I visited San Francisco I discovered that they love 4-way stops. But for some idiotic reason they don’t label them as 4-ways! They look just like normal stop signs.
At first blush this might not seem like a big distinction – but think about it. Say you’re rolling down a street with a marked 4-way stop at every corner. You hit the stop, see that no one driving on the cross-street has reached the intersection first, and roll on, confident that even if someone was approaching from mid-block on the cross-street they won’t hit you because they’ll have to stop at the 4-way. Bottom line: it takes only a couple of seconds and a modest amount of effort to safely cross a 4-way.
A street with normal stop signs is a different matter. You never have right-of-way. You must stop, then check far up and down the cross-street for oncoming traffic. Bottom line: it is a much longer, work-intensive process.
So what does SF do? The put up 4 stop signs, sure enough, but they don’t mark them as 4-ways. So you creep your way past every stop sign, checking left and right as you go when there is no real need to do so. But you better not just assume that ever sign is an unmarked 4-way because you might get plowed by school bus if you assume wrong.
What are those nuts in SF thinking?
Anyway, here in NYC the stop sign policy is like you described in NJ, SmackFu.
I’d estimate 4-way stops constitute about 20% of all residential stop signs in the Southern California area. Doesn’t phase me a bit; some of the old two-way stops in my old neighborhood have been recently converted to four-ways, a move IMO that will make them safer.
There are plenty of 4-way stops here. Lately the city has been putting traffic circles in new communites when they are being built instead of a 4-way stop. I don’t recall if it was a cost driven decision or a traffic flow/safety decision. The only thing I remember about the brief news item I watched was that the people living in the community adapt quickly to the traffic circle and all is well.
I’m starting to see more and more yield signs in place of four-ways. They’ll make one road unobstructed, and one road with a yield sign on each side. You can’t beat that with a stick. Why don’t they do this more? Oh that’s right, it works. :rolleyes:
Here in Lexington KY we have lots of them. Some of them are pretty obnoxious - there’s one near me in an intersection having a total of 9 lanes (two 3-lane including left turn lanes, one 2-lane including a left-turn lane, and one single lane). It’s a pain in the ass because the cars in the different lanes don’t all arrive at the same time.
Most “+”-shaped intersections around here have traffic conceding to the “main drag”, with stop signs at the cross-streets. But 4-way stops aren’t entirely uncommon. I drive through one regularly, and it always makes me nervous, because I never know if the other drivers understand the “onsie-twosie” method of going through one of these things.
On the other hand, I’m driven to fits by people who have no knowledge or understanding of the rule that states when two vehicles arrive at an intersection simultaneously, at right angles, the vehicle on the right has the right of way.
The streets around me are like that - the result, people who know the area slow to a near stop no matter what direction they’re coming from or what the sign says because they know that the people who don’t know the area come barrelling through from every direction, no matter what direction they’re coming from or what the sign says. So, no, it doesn’t always work the way it’s intended to work.
There seems to be no rhyme nor reason to intersections here. There are 4-way stops, 2-way stops, traffic lights, traffic circles, you name it - it’s somewhere. I just really hate the people who don’t know how to use 4-ways, and think “if the car in front of me goes, then I can go, too!”
All of the intersections in my neighborhood are 4-way except for one 2-way. I’ve lived here for ten years and that one still throws me. I get in the rhythm of stop-then-go, stop-then-go and I expect them all to be like that. Does this make me normal or a menace behind the wheel?
Here and in Australia, intersections will either have lights, a roundabout or a Give Way or Stop sign on the road with the least traffic while the busier road is left unobstructed. It works well and there is no confusion.
It’s hard to generalize about this area, since most cities around here have their own rules. I’ve been to towns where almost every intersection is a four way, and others where you see almost none. The city I live in likes them. They’ll put four way and three way stops up at almost any intersection if someone asks for one. Recently, they were asked by a church to put up a three way stop, and they did, despite the fact that the street was a dead end street. The neighborhood I live in for example has many four way stops even though none of the streets are through streets.
Lots of all-way stops here. They’re marked with little ‘all-way’ signs below the stop signs, so they don’t have to make different signs that say 3-way, 4-way, etc. I’ve seen a 2-way all-way stop as well: a road with a sharp right-angle turn.
Near my work is an all-way stop where a wide two-lane road crosses a four-lane road.
I think a lot of people aren’t quite sure how to handle it though: when it’s your turn to go, is it the first pair off the queue at the stop line that goes, or is it only one car at a time from the two waiting at the stop line? People on the four-lane road seem to want to go by pairs.
I always thought the rule (or law, I guess) is that cars proceed through a four way stop in the order they arrived.
I live in Portland, Oregon, USA, and the rule seems to be, “I go whenever the hell I feel like it.” EVERY day I see people just stop for a second, then plow on through, even if the three other cars got there before they did.
Or the opposite. People who sit there absolutely befuddled. Finally, someone takes the initiative, going out of order because the car who is supposed to go is just sitting there. Then the befuddled car decides it’s time to go, and they both meet in the middle.
We have a lot of two-way stop signs in my neighboorhood, and it’s a miracle when someone doesn’t just blow through those without slowing down.
St. Louis, MO has been shown to be the Midwestern capital of stop signs (I believe Pittsburgh is the natinal leader.) So we have 2-way, 3-way, 4-way and in some cases, stop signs in the middle of the block.
We also are the Midwestern capital of the rolling stop, or as it’s sometimes referred to here, “genuflecting.”
Fortunately, our Missouri driver’s manual has complete instructions on how to respond at a 4-way stop. It boils down to “whoever gets there first gets to go first. If everyone gets there at the same time, yield to the driver on your right. If everyone arrives at all four corners simultaneously, figure it out yourselves.”
In my area (rural/suburban) there is definately more four-ways as their are two ways, but i think that four-ways are the devil, if there is enough traffic to warrant one 80% of the time there is enough traffic to warrant a stop light. IMO four-ways should only be used in semi-heavy traffic residential areas where the streets are packed close together enough to make traffic lights unusable.
A couple of the major intersections in beautiful downtown Olive Branch Mississippi are 4-way stops. They’ve been that way for Og knows how many years, and they work extremely well because the locals have learned how to use them at maximum efficiency.
The rationale for the 4-way stop is that the intersecting streets have basically equal traffic volumes, and the traffic volume is fairly heavy (but not heavy enough to mandate a traffic light). If there was only a 2-way stop, the traffic on the stop-sign street would have to wait a long time for a break in other’s street’s traffic, and there would probably be a lot of accidents due to impatience.
A friend of mine once said, “A 2-way stop means ‘slow down’; a 4-way stop means you don’t have to stop at all.”
I have to get up to Naugatuck to see this traffic situation for myself.
In the NYC suburbs (Fairfield County), greater New Haven area, Storres (UConn), the Casino district (Uncasville), and the greater Hartford area, there are more 2-way stops than you can shake a stick at. Also the occasional rotary.
Where is Naugatuck? Is that near Waterbury? Even in Waterbury and Oxford I know there are a bunch of 2-way stops.
I’ve been in CT since the 80s. Are there a bunch of silos in your area? (Did I just call you a hick? )
Same thing here in Israel - traffic circles are especially popular. The entire roadsystem tries to minize confusuin, if only because drivers are so agressive. For example, there’s no such thing as “turning right on red”: if they want you to be able to turn right, there’ll be a right-turn lane with it’s own traffic light or yield sign, and probably a little traffic island seperating it from the forward lane. Trying to base a traffic system on courtesy or patience in these parts is a receipe for certain death.
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