If you observe carefully, you’ll notice that these Stop Signs don’t have the “Dept. of Transportation” inscriptions on it = they were not issued by any government entity.
I’m guessing these Stop Signs are there to guide you and you should probably slow down but can a police officer issue you a ticket if you don’t obey? If you don’t come to a full stop?
Some Stop Signs say “Stop All The Way,” does this mean that those Stop Signs which do not say that mean you can slow down without stopping completely?
A store near me put in a couple of Stop signs on the store side of the drive, but not on the opposite side. Each post has two signs, one viewed from each direction, but I’ve wondered if the drivers on the side away from the store really have to stop, since the signs aren’t on the right side of the drive for them.
If your local shopping center, parking lot, etc. allows the local police to patrol the premises (and mostly they do) then the police will expect you to observe stop signs, speed limits, and other traffic signs.
I believe what you’re reading as “stop all the way” is actually a stop sign that’s marked as “all way” – meaning every road into the intersection stops there.
When you see an 8-sided, red and white sign with the word STOP in big letters on it, it is always advisable to stop, rather than to try and figure out some exception that allows you not to stop.
It depends on what state you’re in. It’s not parking lots, but Ohio allows private residential streets to have enforceable stop signs. The owner of the property is responsible for maintaining the signs, though.
Anyways, you can’t rely on the fact that it’s a parking lot or the lack of a sticker or anything to figure out that it’s a private road or stop sign. My city recently took over half of the road that circles around the area mall (the city is trying to get some retail property developed, and prospective buyers were put off by the lack of public road access), and it’s totally indistinguishable from the private half. I doubt there’s a secret code that distinguishes the stop signs on the public road from the ones on the mall’s access road.
Are you sure it says “all the way” and not just “all way”? (The latter just means that all roads have a stop sign. This thread is the top result on Google for “stop all the way” signs, so it’s pretty unique if it does exist.)
This is surely correct. When I drove in the US, I encountered “All Way” and sometimes “Two way” clarifications on stop signs. Also one in Harrisburg, PA that read “Opposing traffic does not stop”, which read like a way of saying “For the love of all that’s holy, do not run this stop sign!”
What I’d heard is that if the sign is controlling an intersection where both roads are private (i.e. in a parking lot or some such), it’s not legally enforceable. However, a sign controlling you going from a parking lot onto a public road is enforceable.
Here, where I live, the rule is, when leaving any private property thru a private road, alley or driveway. You must stop. So even if you are backing out of your own driveway you must stop and look before proceeding.
I think the signs are just a reminder, though I do know of a fellow who got a ticket for reckless exhibition of driving (or some such wording ) for tearing out of a parking lot driveway without stopping. He wasn’t given any for running a stop sign, but was told if he had hit anything he would have been responsible hands down.
What is the Dept. of Transportation inscription? I don’t remember ever seeing one on a stop sign. And as for such signs in parking lots, a guy once hit my car when he failed to stop at a stop sign in a parking lot. He admitted liability and his insurance company covered repairs to my car.
Me neither. And even if there are tiny stickers on the “real” ones, making them official, I’d need to be driving with binoculars strapped to my glasses to be able to see them so I could know whether or not I’m allowed to ignore the stop. Big red sign says STOP, I’m going to stop. Because everyone else around is going to assume I’m stopping, and that’s sort of the point.
Whether police will cite is dependent on whether the vehicle code can be enforced.
What is not dependent is the insurance companies assigning fault through negligence to someone who doesn’t stop for the stop sign, and causes an accident. You won’t be able to argue that “it wasn’t a legal stop sign so therefore I didn’t have to stop” and you’ll get 37 months of higher premiums for it.
Where I live, there are small stickers on the back of Stop signs. They have the City of Ann Arbor seal, say “Anyone defacing this sign blah blah blah… fines blah blah blah”, and four rows of numbers, three of which have a hole punched out of one number in the row. My interpretation of the nearby one is that the holes signify that the sign was installed Dec. 20, 2004, roughly matching my recollection of when it was installed. The fourth row is unused.
I don’t know that these have any effect on enforceability, but there are stickers. I’d guess Stop signs installed on private property wouldn’t have these city stickers.
Thanks for the explanation, but I really hope that’s not what the OP is referring to. I can’t imagine that anyone would suggest that whether a stop sign is enforceable is dependent on the presence of a sticker on its back side. How the heck are you supposed to see that sticker when stopped at the sign?
That is the function of most parking lot signs. To make it safe in the parking lot and help assign liability when an accident happens.
Now the sign at the exit of the parking lot is a different matter. Many cities will require them and I believe they are enforceable. Also some parking lots can have streets running through them. I worked in the Stanford Shopping Center years ago and the Palo Alto police did give out tickets to those who ran stop signs on the two main roadways on each lside of the stores inside the shopping center.
While obviously the law varies from state to state, police are empowered to enforce criminal laws on private property. They issue tickets for parking in handicapped spots or parking in fire lanes. I would suspect that in most jurisdictions, they can issue tickets for running through a stop sign or speeding in a privately owned parking lot.
The whole idea that one is not obligated to obey traffic signs on private property strikes me as particularly anti-social. If it’s private property, the owner has a right to set reasonable rules, like asking you to stop at a crosswalk, not park in front of a loading dock, or not dump your trash.
It has gotten ridiculous here with some stores putting up a stop sign at every aisle in the parking lot. I hope it isn’t enforceable because I am going to stop every few feet. Instead, I may go elsewhere. Speed bumps are another good way to send me to you competition or Ebay.
The argument (AIUI) is not that Stop signs must have the sticker to be enforceable, it’s that Stop signs must be issued by the government to be enforceable, and those signs also happen to have the sticker.
ETA: I suspect you can find lots of people on the internet arguing that the stickers are required, but I think those arguments are just wrong. The argument above is at least plausible.
This is not quite the law in SC: "SECTION 5652350. Vehicle entering roadway.
The driver of a vehicle about to enter or cross a roadway from any place other than another roadway shall yield the rightofway to all vehicles approaching on the roadway to be entered or crossed. "
If stop signs are not legally enforceable on private property, how about robbery?
Are you saying I can rob someone at gunpoint in the grocery parking lot, and the police can’t arrest me because it’s private property?
The government through elected and appointed officials write laws, codes and regulations. Violating them means your are breaking the law. codes or regulation. The highway department in most places determines is a stop, yeild or other sign is required. In the shopping center it is usually the owners who are desiding what signs and were the signs go. If a shopping center were to descide that everyone should skip while walking on their property, the police could not inforce it. The owner could ask you to skip while walking or leave. I know I am being extream but I could not think of a better example.
The owner of private property can not pass laws, codes, or regulations.
Now there are regulations about parking marked handy cap spaces or fire lanes. And the government will tell the owner of the property how many spaces he is required to have. Codes will tell the owner where to make fire lanes.