Many stoplights still turn into blinking lights at a certain time of night in Green Bay. I think the rationale is: ‘Why bother with a full stop and waiting for a light when the traffic is no longer heavy?’
Believe me, I spent the first two years or so here just in a constant state of outrage.
People here seem to accept it.
http://blog.seattlepi.com/seattle911/archives/161914.asp
It is hard to believe. And I’m talking about two apparently equal streets.
I grew up in a small city in Wisconsin which had a small number of uncontrolled intersections. They’re legal, even covered in the “rules of the road” code and everything. When you went in for a road test, the tester directed you along a route that included at least one uncontrolled intersection.
(And yes, I nearly failed because I wasn’t expecting to encounter one of those. :smack: )
You can’t simply replace stop signs with yield signs. A yield sign means you are yielding the right of way to the other driver, who does not need to stop. Both/all drivers cannot yield. If you have a 4 way yield, which driver yields? If two cars collide in an intersection, whose fault would it be?
California has a lot of intersections with no controls. They are usually buried within residential or business districts. The speed limit for “blind intersections” is 15 MPH.
Some cities also have yield signs where you would normally see stop signs. San Diego
Given the number of collisions that happen every day (notice that I said collisions NOT accidents), we have to assume that a number of those collisions are due to drivers not stopping at intersections, now replace those STOP signs with YIELD signs and imagine the outcome. I wouldn’t want to be on the road.
It boggles my mind that it boggles your mind. In residential areas in the parts of Canada I’ve lived in, uncontrolled intersections are the norm.
Haw. Near me there are some intersections with right turn on red after stop, and some with right turn with a yield sign. At the former intersections drivers pretend to stop before they pull out in front of me, in the latter they don’t even try to look.
Here in South Korea, stop signs and even red lights are routinely ignored by drivers. If you stop at a red light before making a right turn, you are likely to get rear-ended by another driver. Essentially, this is a country without stop signs and the accident rate is quite high.
There was an uncontrolled residential T intersection where people would drive very quickly into it. I wanted people to slow down there because it was an accident waiting to happen. I asked the city to install a yield sign at the T intersection where drivers coming up the base of the T would yield to drivers driving across the top of the T.
Confused, the city engineer on the phone asked me who would the drivers be yielding to.
I replied the drivers coming up the T would yield to drivers coming across the across the T.
He asked why I would ask for a yield sign instead of a stop sign.
I told him I don’t think it’s necessary for drivers to come to a complete stop if they can slow, see that there is no cross-traffic, and proceed safely. Stop signs force a complete stop when it’s not necessary. I just want people to be aware and to slow down.
I told him there were similar intersections in the area that had yield signs instead of stop signs.
He said that is basically old school and they don’t do that kind of thing anymore.
A few days later, the city installed a stop sign there instead of a yield sign.
There was one near where I lived in NJ. There the rule seems to be that local customs apply. It was seldom clear if traffic on a major street yielded to traffic in the circle or vice versa - which explained the many accidents there.
In the second Judy Blume Fudge book there is a scene at a traffic circle on Route 1 in Princeton, just down the street from where I used to live. By the time I got there it was a traditional jug handle, but the traffic must have been horrendous when it was a circle.
St. Louis is the other way around – there’s a widespread belief here (probably unprovable) that St. Louis has more stop signs per mile than any other U.S. city. If you ask the street department why there are so many stop signs, they’ll tell you the Board of Aldermen (like a city council) requested them. If you ask the aldermen, they’ll tell you the neighborhoods petitioned to put them in. And if you ask the neighbors, they’ll curl your hair for hours with stories of drivers who cut through side streets at 50 mph to avoid the main streets, T-bone crashes by drivers who refused to yield, pedestrians who were hit by cars while crossing the street, etc.
[quote=“Si_Amigo, post:11, topic:548211”]
What got me is not the driving on the other side of the road bit. What did get me, and correct me if I’m mistaken, but I swear when I was there a few weeks ago I came to this situation: there are some roundabouts which also have traffic signals on them. However, the presence of green on this traffic signal does not necessarily mean you have the right of way. Apparently, some of these roundabouts, as I discovered have traffic signals stopping oncoming traffic (which is what I expected), while others do not and you’re supposed to yield to traffic that’s already on the circle. Which is counterintuitive to me. When I see “green,” I assume it means go, and you have the right of way.
I completely agree. It’s frustrating to be driving home at midnight or 1 a.m., and to be stuck at a stoplight for 30 or 60 seconds, while absolutely no traffic flows through in the other direction.
I think it just struck my wife as being something out of Green Acres. 
I forget where it is - Norway, perhaps, but there’s a European city that has removed all traffic control devices - they have no traffic signals, no stop signs, none of that.
It’s been a spectacular success. When forced to be careful, people actually can drive safely without a bunch of signs telling them what to do.
Around here, traffic circles are a bust - there’s one near my house that’s difficult to navigate as there’s a relatively major through road and two side streets that “T” with the main road. Other than UPS trucks going from one neighborhood to the other, nobody goes from one side road to the other. All four entries to the circle have YIELD signs, but they’re universally ignored by the through traffic, so cars entering from the sides have to wait for a safe hole in traffic.
How are you supposed to tell if it is an uncontrolled intersection without a sign telling you that it is an uncontrolled intersection? And if they have to put a sign in telling drivers that it is an uncontrolled intersection, then why don’t they just put up the proper stop or yield signs? Or are you just supposed to stop at every single intersection whether it has a stop sign or not? In which case, why spend money on stop signs for any intersections. I don’t get it.
I agree. Uncontrolled intersections are very common in non-urban areas. Seattle has a rigorous hierarchical street system. Arterials all have full signage. Regular streets all have stop signs to get on the arterials. But regular streets rarely have signage where they intersect. In some places they have small “traffic circles” to slow and aid traffic through intersections. Here is a picture of such an intersection.
Found the city with no signs… The small Dutch town of Makkingadoesn’t even have lane markings.
Some other European cities are having pretty decent luck with removing traffic signs as well.
And be as useless as a screen door on a submarine (now where did I hear that before?)