During rush hour this morning, I had to go through a traffic light which was out. The drivers correctly treated the intersection like a 4-way stop and acted accordingly. No accidents and no drama – just an orderly procession through the light.
It was a Wednesday morning miracle!
The horror. I much prefer when some people stop, some slow down and some seem to forget then the intersection even exists.
I especially love Kamikaze Motorcycle Guy! I’m so sad you didn’t get to see him this morning.
On the other side of the coin, a crosswalk was recently installed near my workplace. The crosswalk has a red signal associated with it. If a pedestrian presses the button to cross, the light will change to solid red and then after a few seconds will switch to flashing read. Invariably I have to get behind some moron who does not understand that when the light switches to flashing red you can proceed if no one is in the crosswalk.
In my experience, dead stop lights aren’t that bad. The very unusualness of the situation forces people to put down their cell phones and pay attention.
Regular four-way stops, on the other hand . . . half the population either doesn’t wait at all, or waits forever until every driver clears from all three other streets.
I live on a busy street in Chicago and often the traffic lights switch, for some reason, to blinking red lights, which is equivalent to a stop sign. You wouldn’t believe how many people don’t know this
The incidence of smooth 4-way stopping increases as the complexity of the intersection goes down and goes down as the complexity increases.
In other words, a couple of 2-lane roads with u-turn lanes and left-turn lanes intersecting will work great without a light, while a six lane divided highway frontage road intersecting a 4 lane street with left turn lanes will go to hell faster than you can blink an eye if the stoplight fails.
It obviously wasn’t Charlotte. I’m starting to get used to it, but drivers here scare me. I spent 20 years driving in California, and there’s a method to the madness there. But not here… For the most part, red seems to mean “MASH THE GAS AND GET OUTTA MY WAY!” Green usually means go like a scalded cat, but twice, I’ve nearly rear-ended people who probably know people who run red lights, so they take no chances and STOP AT THE GREEN.
If I knew a traffic signal was out up ahead here, I’d try to find an alternate route.
There’s a major intersection near my house that must generate a field of insanity. It’s not that complicated; it’s just two four-lane roads intersecting neatly. Turn lanes, etc.
But it never fails that red lights are treated as optional. I mean that literally. I have to navigate it every day, and It. Never. Fails.
So the light turns green, and everybody goes. Good so far. Then the light turns yellow. People still going. OK. Then the light turns red. WTF? That guy just ran the light. Holy shit! So did the next three…no, make that five! FIVE cars! Now they’re backed up from the next light down the road, and four people are still clogging the intersection, not allowing the cross-street traffic to go.
They eventually clear out. Then the cross-street traffic does the same thing! So does the turn-lane traffic. It’s incredible. This happens on every single light change. They have the gall to honk and yell at me when I stop on a late yellow. :rolleyes:
Oh no, you’ve reminded me of the Constantly Dead Lights.
There’s a set of lights by my apartment that mysteriously go out several times every summer. I don’t get it. There’s a couple sets of lights here that like going out in the summer, but this set goes out all the time. Now, because of our 4th season, Roadwork (first is Almost Winter, second is Winter and third is End of Winter), that intersection is even more busy. Expecting a couple of good gong shows this summer. Last summer the power went out on the entire block, so I managed to get into Dairy Queen before they shut it down and I sat outside watching the chaos with my ice cream.
That’s a real good time - we were privileged to spend an lovely summer afternoon in a local park one day, sitting on a bench, watching the police give everyone tickets for not using personal flotation devices on the river. Nothing like spectating chaos. 
I had no idea this stuff happened. I’ve never seen anyone not treat a broken traffic light as a four way stop–except back when it was okay to have flashing yellows on the most used portion of the intersection.
When the light at the end of my street goes out, pretty much nobody treats it as a four-way stop (it’s a T-intersection between a residential street and a four-lane road with a speed limit of 50 mph, so I don’t really have high expectations). Most people on the main road slow down a little, I guess so that they can show sympathy without any real courtesy, but a significant number just blast through, even when there are cars trying to turn.
The real fun is watching a busy four way intersection that has even lost backup power*. The number of people who are unable to assume it should be blinking red are amazing. Some people just think no light, no controls. Some people sit forever.
*Fun during the day, freakin deadly at night though.
I go through a four way stop every day going to and from work. The best strategy I’ve developed for it is to come up to the intersection and try to figure out how everyone else thinks a four way stop is supposed to work. Some days it goes clockwise to figure out who goes through next. Other days it is counter-clockwise. Then sometimes it’s north-south then east-west. I’ve even seen it switch patterns while I’ve been waiting at the intersection. And of course you get the occasional “I think I can go through and not get killed so I’m just going even if it’s not my turn” strategy.
So when the OP said they treated it like a four way stop and acted accordingly the first thing I think of is a bunch of idiots in complete chaos. 
The route I drive to work includes several four-way stops; it’s a small town, there’s only three lights on Main. It being a tourist town morons on bikes and on foot tend to wander anywhere they damn please and the driving tourists don’t always seem to know what to do at the four-way stops but us locals do. It shocked me at first.
We also behave ourselves at lights that are out. Gotta watch out for the Californians and the Utahns, otherwise it’s easy peasy.
I’m impressed by the civility at the other end of our bridge. It’s an old bridge, slated for replacement in the coming years, and the approach on that side is not optimal. Rush hour coming this direction onto the bridge is from two directions, with a sharp curve to get onto it. The traffic from one direction has the right of way, the other has a stop sign. But every day, when there are long lines of cars, you see people alternating back and forth, allowing the stop sign people to ‘zipper’ into the traffic.
Not universal. There was a car accident here in Houston a few days ago because the power company had turned off power to a traffic light so they could do repairs gasp, and an SUV with 16 kids in it got flipped, killing a couple of the kids. Now the parents filed a lawsuit against the power company because they didn’t have signs up that the power was out and that the light wasn’t working.
Off-topic and I’ll probably get slammed – but this scenario is exactly why I am in favor of red-light cameras. This kind of crap doesn’t happen anymore at a busy intersection on my daily route since they put cameras in, and I love it!
More on topic: Coincidentally, there was a light out (different one) on my way to work this morning. Usually very busy. When I got to the line, there was no cross-traffic and no oncoming traffic. It was weird.
An SUV with 16 kids in it? Do you have a link to the news story? Did it actually have capacity for 16 people? SIXTEEN?
ETA: found the goddamn story myself. http://www.myfoxhouston.com/dpp/news/local/110529-auto-accident-takes-the-lives-of-two-children Not that any kid deserves to die, but a family with 6 children who doesn’t put their little kids in seat belts, and holds a 9 month old on her lap instead of putting it in a strapped-in baby carrier… what the fuck did they expect to happen? Jesus fucksticking Christ.