I grew up in a village on a through street connecting two main arteries, and cars would bomb up the street day and night, a danger to children and animals. When I moved to the 'burbs, by some stroke of luck (we didn’t know anything about picking out a place to live, we were just looking for a house. Any house.) we bought a house NOT a connecting street, NOT on a corner, and NOT near the main roads. Therefore, it’s as silent and empty as if a neutron bomb went off during the day, except for the mail truck. Between 4 and 6 p.m. you’ll see the PT cruisers and Subarus roll up into garages, doors shutting behind them till the morning exodus between 6 and 8 a.m. That’s about it as far as traffic goes.
I live on a tiny narrow street in the older part of town. Tons of trees, no on street parking within 2 blocks and you’d think it would be quiet. But it’s not. During rush hour it’s a short cut/avoid the traffic on Hwy 7 selection for way too many people. Between 7:30 and 9am and 4 and 6:30pm it’s almost impossible to get out of my driveway.
Small cul de sac: maybe 8 houses and 2 empty lots. The kids could go play in the street and hardly have to move for traffic. Busiest it gets is either when the college kids across the street have a party or when the rednecks down the street are fixing their truck. We also have a local policeman who lives two houses up on the other side of the street.
Our road is fairly busy. I’ll have to wait a couple of minutes before pulling out in the mornings taking my niece to school.
It used to be a gravel road out in the ‘country’ when my hubby was growing up. As the years went by and more people moved out this way, it’s gotten busier and busier.
Fortunately for us our driveway is about 500 feet long so we’re kind of insulated from it. It still annoys me how much garbage people throw out on our property. Grrrrr.
It’s a block and a half long, and even though it’s near one of the exits to our subdivision, the way it curves off the road, no one uses it to leave unless they live here. They’d have to turn off the other road on purpose to come out my way so they don’t.
I don’t even usually look behind me when I’m backing out because there is almost no reason. Maybe 2-3 times monthly I have to wait for a car to pass before I head down the driveway.
No people either – this is not an have-fun-outside sort of neighborhood.
I live in a one-way, in an already extremely walkable neigbourhood. It’s pretty quiet.
Same with me.
It’s almost amazing how deceptive appearances can be when it comes to this. For instance, here’s the street I lived on until last month. Because behind the camera there’s a signal at a major north-south thoroughfare, and one which, moreover, leads to on-ramps in both directions onto the 10 freeway, there’s a constant rattle of traffic all day long. It’s true that during much of the day you can jaywalk, but still, traffic comes at any time and you do have to look. We even got big commercial trucks–e.g. auto carriers–barreling through. A little ahead of the camera there’s a depressed area in the asphalt apparently caused by an underground watercourse, as vehicles pass over this, they bounce and rattle, setting off car alarms. Add to that two large schools nearby and the traffic does get heavy. The parents from one of them, a large private school to the right and up above the street in this picture, are allowed to drive down through the apartment complex parking lot after picking up their kids. I’ve never heard of such a thing and can only assume the school must have had a special right of way before the apartments were built. We ended up moving to the other end of the complex, because of the noise as well as other reasons, but have a picture of our new street, but it’s a world of difference.
Here’s a view just about standing in front of the house where I grew up. Of course you can see cars moving; there are ALWAYS cars moving through here. So I can’t even claim it looks terribly quiet in the picture. The road to your right leads to West Hollywood. The road behind you leads to Beverly Hills or the San Fernando Valley depending on which way you turn at the bottom of the hill. You do the math!
I live on a dead-end, sort of narrow street, way out by nowhere, with no full-time residents except for me. It should be dead quiet, but alas… Lot’s of kids cruise around on golf-carts and 4-wheelers, then there are also the (I cannot figure out why) folk that actually turn down my road, (usually with a trailer or boat behind them), only to finally realize it doesn’t go anywhere. Note: that is obvious from the entrance.
Then, they try to back out (as there is no turnaround). My fence, and my huge concrete planters have been pretty much destroyed by that activity.
You’re in Montreal and you think the drivers around Carleton Place are nuts? :dubious:
ETA: Funny how we all think that drivers from other places are the crazy ones. 
We had similar problems, then we had a huge, decorative boulder placed on either side of the gravel road. They now are decorated with swatches of paint.
A city street dead-ends into my mobile home park. We have a lot of neighbors coming and going, especially at morning and evening rush hour (so to speak). And at night some of our neighborhood [del]dealers[/del] independent pharmaceutical contractors have cars coming and going pretty regularly.