Hopefully this isn’t too much of a hijack, but when I moved to Wyoming in 1980 I discovered the existence of 0-way stops. Most of the minor intersections simply had no signage at all. Although in theory the right-of-way belonged to the first vehicle to arrive at the intersection (and to the vehicle to the right in case of a tie), in real life it belonged to whichever person was driving the bigger pickup truck.
No, but the crossing either has two stop signs, or none at all. If you have a stop sign, you wait until the cars coming from the other direction pass…so logically, if everybody has a stop sign, everybody waits.
Reading the thread, I think the equivalent of the American four stops would be no stop at all, giving the right of way to cars on your right.
I can see the need for four way stops when traffic is roughly the same in both directions but is not heavy enough for stop lights. What is maddening is subdivisions where there is a dominant street where the main traffic flows and a bunch of side streets that end in a cul-de-sac. It apparently only takes one person who lives on the street with the cul-de sac to bitch about how unfair it is that they have to stop but the drivers on the higher volume street do not.
Viola! Instant four way stop. I’m only slightly exaggerating about this. I saw this happen in the last subdivision I lived in.
That’s pretty much it, although of course if you’re opposite the car that gets to go next, even if you just arrived at the stop sign, you can go. The difference between the way you describe the French system and the American system is that in the US, instead of waiting for all the traffic to go in one direction, everyone takes turns.
I will admit that I sometimes get confused at four-way stops. (This might be because I very rarely drive, though.) But a bit of gesturing “go go go!” quickly resolves the issue.
A simple 4-way is easy. If it’s just one lane in each direction, there are only a maximum of 3 other cars to pay attention to. And that’s only if all four of you get to the stop at the same time, which I find rarely happens. In heavy traffic, there will be some alternating of turns ahead of you at the intersection, so when you arrive at the stop line there will already be some cars there. They got there first, so they go first. Easy.
Where it gets weird is when there are separate turning lanes. On the way to work, I go through an intersection where there are two lanes in each direction, thus leaving you with potentially 7 other cars to pay attention to. Again, the chances of 8 cars arriving at the intersection at exactly the same time is minimal.
A roundabout might be easier, but I think people would die if you plopped one of those out here in the cornfields.
But more directly re: the OP, there are 4-ways in Mexico, at least in Cd. Juárez.
Anyone who has ever been skiing in France and experienced trying to get on a lift will know that there is not a hope in hell of an “everyone takes turns” system working in France.
Also, France’s priorité à droite system has aspects that most definitely do not mirror anything in America, or anywhere else that I have driven. Imagine that you are driving down a country road and a tractor pulls right out in front of you because his minuscule country lane gets priority. Or a roundabout where traffic entering the roundabout has priority (what do you do when the roundabout is full?).
When I was learning to drive, I always enjoyed coming across this five-way stop in Dubuque, IA.
Google Map Link It’s a lot more confusing when you’re on the ground than it appears from the map.
As has been explained upthread, 4-ways are easy and I don’t really understand how anyone could have a problem with them: They got there first? They go first. You got there first? You go first. Simple.
Also, if you anticipate that there will be some confusion as to who arrived first, it is very easy to make a point of delaying your stop so as to clearly give the right of way to someone else or to approach quickly and stop abruptly so as to take the right of way if you feel like being selfish.
Occasionaly, you can take your turn out of order and go earlier if the car who would otherwise get to go before you is blocked by a car with the right of way proceeding through the intersection and your proceeding through the intersection does not interfere with the car with the right of way. Just make sure you are out of the way of the car which you leap-frogged when they have the opportunity to proceed or they will be pissed.
Dutch guys also think that the first in-first out rule must inevitably result in aggression, chaos and firey death.
Here right of way goes to the person approaching from the right at a level crossing. They don’t have 4 way stops, and rarely use stop signs at all relatively speaking. They do have right of way roads, right of way intersections, and a metric buttload of yield signs.
I used to try to explain that really any right of way rule works just fine as long as everyone agrees upon it but they just don’t believe me. Even my driving instructor does not believe me. I suppose this is why they have all of this superfluous signage regulating every damn thing.
Well, Wiki gets it right, we have them here in South Africa - not generally at the busiest of intersections, usually more a suburban/side road thing, and more prevalent in certain regions or municipalities than others (we have roundabouts too)
They’re not hard to navigate, they’re a FIFO stack.
Pretty sure we have nothing like it in the UK. At the intersection of four roads (or where one road crosses another perpendicularly), one of the following happens:
-One road (the higher-ranking one, usually) has right of way straight through the junction - the side roads have a stop or give way sign and markings.
-A roundabout
-Traffic lights, the sequencing of which is not standard from one place to another.
As others have said, the major road/minor road yield-sign system is the norm, to which you can add miniroundabouts, which (in the UK, at least) work in law identicallly to full-size ones, and this essentially boils down to ‘give way to the left’ in function (when driving on the left).
Stop signs in most of Europe are reserved for junctions where there is a particular problem with restricted lines of sight or difficult angles, judged to make any rolling entry into the major road, such as through a yield sign, hazardous.
Careful, or you’ll fail your theory test 
There’s the other option, the unmarked junction, where ‘no driver has priority’ (also the rule for broken traffic lights).
I thought about mentioning it, but I considered it too low down the scale for comparison to anything anyone was walking about.
I don’t know, I’ve certainly come across 4-way stops which could easily have been ranked as minor enough to not bother marking in the UK.
I sometimes wonder if there’s a difference in the way the adaptation of an old-world pre-car infrastructure to gradually become and accomodate modern roads necessarily requires drivers to judge situations as they arise, compared to how one which was built, in the main, with the car in mind and for which a comprehensive set of rules could be written. (‘No right-on-red in New York City’ is perhaps an example of an exception being needed for a far less ‘American’ road layout.)
I find 4-way stops about a 5 on a driving difficulty scale of 1 - 100. Anyone could learn it in less than five minutes. It just means taking turns in regards to who got there first and if you break that, you are an asshole pure and simple but is still unlikely that it will cause any wrecks. The vast majority of people do comply just fine however so there is rarely a issue with 4-way stops in the U.S. and Canada.
I guess it depends on what you’re used to.
Here, we just had the Highway Department install 2 of those roundabouts, and drivers are up in arms about it. Demanding that they be bulldozed, and replaced with ‘real’ intersections. Or at least release the name of the fool designer who did this, so they can hang him in effigy (or maybe in person, if they can catch him).
The location seems odd. These were placed on a main highway, at the intersection with a minor county road. The highway has a 60mi/hr speed limit, but it suddenly drops down to 20mi/hr at these roundabouts, then goes back up again. The curve is sharp, and not banked – if drivers don’t hit their brakes hard, they will be going too fast on the roundabout, and in danger of going over the side.
These seem very poorly located, and poorly designed. But it’s another item from the same Highway department that let the busiest bridge in the state fall into the Mississippi River – what else would you expect?
One of the benefits of roundabouts is precisely that it requires drivers to slow to such a speed, reducing the possibility of errors becoming collisions, or lessening the severity of any impact. However, that’s not necessarily of defence of these particular examples, and the idea of actually having a signed change in speed limit suggests that the road layout alone wasn’t going to get people to slow down.
That shows why roundabouts are an abomination and an indicator of an uncivilized civilization. We also have roundabouts in New England and they work poorly to say the least and create ill-will among citizens in the Boston area. Four way stops are incredibly easy. All you have to do is take terms just like your were taught in elementary school let alone as adults. My daughters are 1/4 Italian yet I can’t stand most Italians proper because of their shitty little cars making aggressive moves on such roads. This is not a go-cart track. Can’t we all just get along?
sigh
Any argument involving roundabouts in New England is automatically null and void, because of the inevitable confusion between a modern roundabout and a large traffic circle, both within the discussion and within the population using the thing.
It’s simple once you’ve be told how it works. But the OP didn’t. I just told him what I would have done suddenly facing a four stops crossing : :dubious:
:dubious: