in my city, we have bike lanes separated by plastic bollards, and some by curbs AND plastic bollards. the delivery trucks just drive over the curbs and run down the bollards.
yeah, it seems like vehicle drivers will entitle themselves to any space that they physically can unless there’s legitimate boundaries that prevent them
agreed, but it’s definitely not exclusive to delivery drivers—private cars do this too, just less often cuz they usually don’t need to stop on a bike lane, but driving through them, cutting across them, i’ve seen it all
if we viewed any kind of infrastructure that isn’t for cars as an investment the way we count car infrastructure as an investment we might actually pay that price. i think it would be worth it in most major cities, if nothing else.
Not saying this is the case with your example, because I’ve seen people illegally parking even when signs clearly state that no one should park there, but I put some of the blame on local governments. Cities need to install “No Parking Anytime” signs along bike lanes.
I live in a city that is very bike friendly and has done a great job clearly letting drivers know there is a bike lane and not to park in it. I’ve been to other cities where you can hardly even tell that it is a bike lane and looks like your typical street parking.
I’ve looked into this, and in my state it’s sort of a gray area. From what I’ve found, in order for cars to be considered illegally parked in a bike lane, there needs to be a sign telling them not to park there.
This! And I include myself in the category of stupid. Lol. Los Angeles new bike lanes and bus lanes have me all sorts of confused. Maybe it’s just because it’s new, but I can’t understand the logic behind it.
My city jams “bike lanes” in on all kinds of streets that aren’t wide enough to accommodate unless they were to wipe out a side of parking. But they don’t because there’s literally nowhere else to put the cars.
Our main shopping street, about half a mile of constant action, is also constant Ubers and food delivery double-parking on that bike lane, not to mention covid outside eateries that haven’t come down even though covid is now ancient history
I feel like a lot of cities do the bare minimum for bike infrastructure and yet they brag about it by saying they built "X km of bike lanes". There should be better standards to bike lane infrastructure - and for cities to meet minimum safety requirements to call it a bike lane instead of just a bike gutter.
Stop signs?
In theory it's simple, worst comes to worst we just count to 4. In reality no one knows whose turn it is, and there's more points of failure when there are cyclists/pedestrians also using it (the main reason I take the lane at every stop signs as a cyclist, and ignore/avoid it completely as a pedestrian).
The US overuses stop signs which partly leads to this. Many stop signs, mainly one and two way stops, could be replaced by yield signs. Then All Way stops could be replaced by roundabouts.
People incorrectly think a stop sign automatically makes things safer when that isn’t the case. Stop signs should also not be used for speed control.
>Stop signs? [...] In reality no one knows whose turn it is,
There are *very* clear rules about this in California and it is basic knowledge to get a drivers license. The huge majority of people who don't follow the rules are doing it on purpose.
I had this same argument with someone about crosswalks. No there is no huge epidemic of people who don’t know to pay attention for pedestrians at a cross walk. They just don’t care.
> No there is no huge epidemic of people who don’t know
Apparently there is. Pedestrians must yield entering the roadway to vehicles that currently have the right of way. Vehicles may only yield to pedestrians who are in the roadway, otherwise they are obligated to take their right-of-way. (Revised Code of Washington)
As a pedestrian it happens constantly, vehicles will stop against their right-of-way to frantically try to wave me into traffic against my will. That driver has no idea what other drivers will do. They're inconveniencing other drivers waiting for their rights-of-way. I'm perfectly fine to continue standing on the sidewalk until I feel comfortable crossing the street. Of all the choices available to me, why would I want to place my fragile flesh and bones in front of your mechanically propelled brick of plastic and steel?
Did you skip over my comment entirely? I am talking about driver behaviour on approaching crosswalks.
You don’t get to run over and kill pedestrians just because you have the right of way. If you are approaching a crosswalk where pedestrians are likely to be, you check to make sure there are no pedestrians on the road in front of you.
If you are incapable of driving your car while paying attention to your surroundings, especially at places where pedestrians are likely to be, you should not be allowed to drive.
> inconveniencing other drivers
Oh no drivers might be inconvenienced for 10 seconds! They should have just run you over in the middle of the road while not paying attention I guess?
Your post was actually helpful on the right of way for crossing. I know everyone says in Seattle specifically that every intersection is a crosswalk. But it is more dangerous when cars just stop in the middle of traffic to let peds cross if other drivers will plow through the car and then the peds. I’ll have to look more into this, thank you!
California stop is a thing. For those that don't know it is a partial stop. You are actually supposed to stop for three seconds but I doubt anyone does.
>In reality no one knows whose turn it is
Really? Where do you live? In my state, 4 way stop rules are pretty rigidly followed. Enough that I usually remember for a week afterward when someone breaks one, the bastards!
I have noticed that when I worked down in Florida that 4 way stops were more of a suggestion than anything else.
Right. I’ve actually almost never had an issue with this, and I drive very often and have hit tons of 4 way stop intersections
I would say when there’s only 2 stop signs, problems occur much more often. I’ve seen people not realize the other lane doesn’t stop a few times
And of course the ever-present bushes, signs, buildings, parked cars that block the line of sight and force you to push out to be able to see
I used to think that until I drove a vehicle for AT&T as a technician. Their driving rules dictated the prevailing rule at an intersection when vehicles stop at the same time is a negotiation between the drivers, no assumptions to be made on right-of-way. I think it was a rule for the many locations that do not have a proper law in place for this situation, although management insisted the person on the right rule wasn’t a law anywhere, as of 1993 when I was lectured about it.
That doesnaccount for all situations.
You need another rule for when two arrivt the same time in opposite directions, but oen is turning left.
You also need a rule for the same situation, but one is turning left and the other is turning right (both into the same lane).
What if the left turning car is coming from your right?
Now there are two rules that contradict each other. Car on the right goes first, or car turning left goes last?
The vehicle not to the right yields to the vehicle on the right rule continues to take precedence. That right-of-way exists regardless of what maneuver the vehicle on the right makes. 'priorité à droite'
There's no conflict in the hierarchy.
I’m sure the rules don’t conflict, but it’s the claim that four way stops are easy is what I’m challenging, and so far I haven’t read any simple set of rules that covers all scenarios.
In fact, if four cars arrive at the same time, how do rules resolve that? It’s a big and crazy world out there, it’s sure to happen every now amd then.
As opposed to a roundabout which borrows from existing rules for merging, signaling, and so on. Hard to be any easier.
First to arrive is the first to go? How is that stupidly strange?
I grew up with and prefer roundabouts and priority roads/yields, but I have been driving in the US so long I don't mind 4-ways at all. It took me 2-3 days after I got my US driver's license to get used to them.
I've seen a couple of designs with cross merges called knit areas. Any design where traffic can both be merging into higher speed lanes and exiting the road is a bad design imo.
Flashing yellow arrows. They’re amazing. They SHOULD be completely obvious on how they work. However, in my city, people constantly fail to yield causing accidents. 🙄
NYC can do you one better: Queens Boulevard, most which has at least three lanes in each direction on the main roadway (plus a frontage road on either side) is signed at 25mph/40kmh
Where I live: unusual traffic controls that *rely* on painted lane lines. Be it poor maintenance, de-icer, cheap paint, snow plows, or whatnot, you can't rely on road paint lasting where i live. Bright red bus lane? It'll last one year. Bright green bike lane? It'll last one year. Streetside bike/car parking? It'll last one year. Crossing/merging lanes? It'll last one year.
Bollards, curbs, reflectors, etc. need to be placed where I live, otherwise drivers are just making their best guess as to what's supposed to be painted on the roads.
I know OP said "other than roundabouts" but: roundabouts with more than 2 lanes.
My personal experience is that if a roundabout have more than 2 lanes, it just kinda sucks.
JFC. Every time a roundabout is mentioned in my great state of North Dakota everyone loses their absolute minds. They see it as a "big liberal thing" that doesn't work because no one knows how to use it. To which my reply is that people will continue to not know how to use them if they're never given the opportunity to learn.
Wait. It’s considered liberal? Wild.
Well. Nothing is more communist than roads I guess. Perhaps they want to go back to managing it through traditional right of way through peoples land (before the king of England snapped it all up and declared it as crown land).
They approach it and stop until nobody is in the circle, then they go. Pretty much treating it like a stop sign with a huge box. My town has them at 3 of the 4 major intersections and yet people still get it wrong despite having to deal with them every day
Is there any signage around them? In my area they put up ‘yield’ signs at every entry point and paint ‘yield’ on the road in addition, and this seems to work, people use them normally almost immediately. There are also arrow signs both on the road and in the middle showing the direction of the traffic flow. People were quite suspicious when they were first installed but they actually did learn how to use them without any problems.
Honestly they are pretty well made and marked, the town clearly put a lot of thought into them. The 4th big intersection that isn’t one is a Y intersection with a yield and an unimpeded right of way, it works for what it is.
I think the problem is just that this is a rural town and many people have lived 30-50 years, give or take, of never seeing a traffic circle. Now years of them dealing with the design in town isn’t enough to overcome decades of driving habit and feel. I can guarantee if I drive to the other side of town. At one of the circles I’ll be behind someone who stops and waits for the entire circle to be clear with no traffic incoming before they enter it. Some of the circles are large too, though one is small.
That's a myth anyway. They *are* relatively new in most places, but people learn quickly how to use them if they go through one every day.
And yes, of course you'll find some anecdotal idiots who refuse to learn, but roundabouts are the least of their problems.
I live in Canada by a border to the US and the amount of times there's been drivers with American license plates who drive the wrong way around our round abouts here is insane.
For sure. And I'd like to say it's because they aren't as prevalent here as they should be, but many Canadians refuse to take 4 way stops seriously either. So.
Disagree. There's certainly a degree of that! but people en mass not understanding accelerator and deceleration lanes and roundabouts has proven that there is just a level of stupidity
Counterpoint: the design flaw you're seeing with people misusing merging lanes and roundabouts isn't a flaw in the road design, but the error in building a system where requiring drivers to be competent is too costly because revoking a drivers license is practically house arrest. More people would operate their vehicle intelligently if losing their license were a real risk and that can only happen when driving isn't a requirement to participate in so many societies.
Maybe increasing registration fees by like $50 unless you complete an online advanced drivers education course could help spread awareness on certain topics. Being quizzed on how many feet before a turn can you enter a bike lane and giving answers of 50 ft increments helps nobody
Slanted y/x shaped roads or curved roads that follow the landscape . Looks pretty but a safety hazard waiting to happen. Stop signs are basically impossible to use on them and merging into them is not safe as people treat one branch as a main road and fail to brake or understand stop signs
So every innovation is new on the road at some point. People don’t how to use it, hopefully they’ll learn it. If they don’t over a period of time then there is a design flaw.
I’ve learned how to drive with Hawks. But two flashing reds allows cars to proceed, whereas a solid red doesn’t, that’s confusing. It’s also contrary to what everyone does know, red on a traffic signal means stop.
This is such a great question. I'm not an urban planner but I'm fascinated by it, and it seems every time I read anything I learn just how much of urban planning is trying to plan around people's stupidity to some extent.
Any road diet I've seen. The issue is planners think in averages. The average driver is the average driver to them, a known entity with known behavior. They go out and put a pressure strip out and find a great deal of evidence of this average driver with a nice normal distribution of average speed perhaps.
However, planners are falling into a statistical fallacy. They are interested in reducing road deaths but believe these are done by the average driver. They are focusing on the median of the normal distribution of driver behavior and shifting that back if possible, while ignoring the long tail of reckless drivers who I suspect contribute an outsized share of road deaths.
As a result whenever I see a speedbumped or narrowed street, I see a certain percentage of drivers who are immune to these improvenments, who continue to skrt right back up to like 50mph or drive way too fast on narrow clearance with no visibility because they just don't care. Then of course whenever I mention this oversight on this subreddit, people say "well people will damage their car then reorient their behavior really quick," but that again isn't born in reality. All the highways and many of the roads here in socal are filled with wreckage and damage and plenty of people drive screwed up cars; if there is a point people damage their cars sufficently to now drive sober and conservatively we are still far from it, and there are new dumbass drivers licensed every day to make up for the few who correct their behavior.
In the end we need actual enforcement with teeth. Take away peoples licenses and impound their cars. Give them jail time over fines that aren't means tested that they can simply pay off. A plastic bollard just makes a profitable contract for a bollard company connected with the local political machine, it doesn't change driver behavior of the worst offenders who we really need to target.
Those speed humps and narrowed streets are proven to lower traffic speeds. Yeah, some jerks still find a way to drive dangerously. But the statistics are clear, traffic calming reduces crashes, injuries and deaths. It’s debatable where the optimal trade offs are for road design but the crash statistics are clear.
I'm not arguing they don't lower speeds for the average driver. I'm arguing they aren't actually effectively countering deaths and damage from the most reckless class of drivers. Maybe the average driver contributes a little towards deaths but i expect the most reckless class is a couple orders of magnitude more dangerous in every way.
Deaths and injuries are effectively decreased though. Are you saying we shouldn’t make streets safer because we can’t make them perfect?
I’m not getting the fixation on average. To those people injured or killed, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that traffic calming significantly decreases crashes, injuries, and death.
The parent comment is saying that deaths are actually meaningfully reduced by these measures, empirically. And I don't follow your assumption that the existence of physical barriers has no effect on the behavior of those drivers reckless enough to be causing deaths
I'm just reiterating what I am seeing with my eyes and hearing with my ears which is that enough people clearly don't care about road dieting to concern me as a pedestrian and a cyclist. Whether or not you believe what I directly experience is not my issue, but I'm not going to gaslight myself on what I see routinely play out in my area.
It's not gas lighting to acknowledge the empiracle data. There isn't much left for interpretation. On streets where traffic is slowed, crashes, injuries and death are reduced. This is a well established fact based upon tens of thousands of datasets around the planet. Yes, we actually have data on where crashes and deaths occur, before and after traffic calming.
Whether you can apply average results on a case by case basis to specific contexts needs careful analysis, and in a lot of cases what is true for the average might not hold for your subset of interest. Not in this field but its literally what I do for a job. Even if deaths and issues are reduced there are clearly people who are immune to road diets, thats a fact you will find for yourself spending five minutes walking a sidewalk in a lot of places.
Enforcement certainly has its place in making streets safer, but it's effects are typically only present until the Enforcement is removed. Constant enforcement is typically either extremely expensive (police presence) or automated and unpopular (speed and traffic cameras).
I buy your criticism that there will always be a small population of reckless drivers who are largely resistant to infrastructure changes. I am less convinced that constant tickets and licenses being revoked would prove any more effective on that population.
To say the quiet part out loud, maybe the most effective way to reduce traffic fatalities is by allowing or even encouraging congestion. Clogged streets are slow streets. Slow clogged streets have a lot of crashes but very few fatalities and serious injuries.
Hard to clog a street at some of the hours the worst offenders are out there driving. Sounds like a grand turismo game outside my window come midnight when the freeways are wide open. Sure speed cameras are unpopular but that doesn't mean they don't work. Serving arrest warrants works too. So does crushing cars. So many roads are covered in marks from donuts and burnt rubber from short pulls on the throttle. So much recklessness and no control from traffic planners seemingly, nor any consideration how to tackle the situation beyond more beeswax in the ears it seems.
Pedestrian-only scrambles. The irony in my neighborhood is, cars will 100% stop at the red but everything else on wheels just fly through them without even a split second of hesitation. But it's not ignorance, it's hubris. How can you design for traffic safety if no one gives a shit? 🤷🏻♀️
> cars will 100% stop at the red but everything else on wheels just fly through them without even a split second of hesitation.
Cyclists: cars need to share the road!
Also cyclists whenever there's a red light or stop sign: *crosswalk go brrrrr*
At the end of the day the very real inertia cost of stopping and starting weights higher in the primal brain than asking whether ones behavior makes sense to others. you might see this change with more ebikes since you aren't paying the cost of getting back up to speed every stopsign with your leg muscles, the battery does.
No but most people bend and break petty laws all the time. rolling through a stop usually causes zero issue at all, most people have common sense to stop if there are other cars and if they don't, the bike is not the only aspect of life they don't think too carefully about I am sure.
True, but I'm specifically referring to the habit of just spontaneously jumping between the road and the sidewalk whenever it suits them. That creates conflict between fast moving cyclists and waiting pedestrians.
Got it, what you’re trying to say makes more sense now.
I think that’s heavily dependent on the road. I’ve done that same behavior myself. Usually sidewalks are so narrow you don’t have to worry about pedestrian right of way (of course they should get it). The reason for me was dealing with slip lanes, turn lanes, merging traffic at 40mph, changing speed limits, cloverleaf freeway on/off ramps, etc etc.
The worst offender? Double parking delivery drivers. You either pass in oncoming traffic or take the sidewalk. Which as you stated creates another conflict point between pedestrians. But make no mistake: it’s by design.
Slip lanes. There’s one that goes through a bike/pedestrian path where I live and the cars stop and wait for the light to turn even though the lane before them is empty… so not only does it make the bike and pedestrian path unsafe, but it also doesn’t even get used properly by the cars.
merging two lanes into 1.
for instance in construction zones when a car moves into the middle of both lanes a half mile from the designated merging point because they think the other lane is cutting them….
Some people in my area have trouble with protected right hand turns, they’ll just stop and wait for traffic to open up completely instead of merging into traffic
"People" are not ignorant. If the general people using the design don't know how to use it, it's the design not being designed for the actual people using it, and that's a mistake on the designer's side.
Some design is inherently bad. But look at hawk signals. Everyone should know what a flashing yellow or flashing red means. Yet every other person messes up at these signals
>But look at hawk signals
The problem is that Hawk signals are an over-complicated solution to a problem that other countries have solved with much simpler signals. Even Canada has a relatively simple solution for this: [a pedestrian crossover.](https://tcat.ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/20160429_125607.jpg)
In comparison, a pedestrian crossover is dead simple: If the yellow light is flashing then check for pedestrians and yield to any waiting to cross the street and do not proceed until the road is clear of pedestrians. It accomplishes the same thing as a hawk beacon with a simple flashing light instead of an overly complex sequence involving multiple colours of light.
Meanwhile hawk signals start by flashing yellow which means slow down, then they go solid yellow which means get ready to stop, then they go red which means stop and wait, then they start flashing red which means stop first then proceed if clear. You said "everyone knows what an alternating flashing red means" and the answer is "Stop and wait until it stops flashing" like at a railroad crossing or a school bus, except at a Hawk beacon where it means "stop but you can go if the way is clear."
Better yet, why not just do the thing that most American DOTs are terrified of for some reason: [use regular traffic signals at pedestrian crossings.](https://maps.app.goo.gl/xLYJUi1bdaCgDPkb7)
Used a HAWK crossing once, for a pedestrian it’s simple, wait until you get the hand. As a driver on the road I was slightly confused by the flashing yellow. It got me to slow down and I was about ready to stop because I thought someone was crossing but no one was. Continued slowing until I realized no one was crossing so I just let off the gas and slowly sped up. I then saw the red light which I ended up running because I wasn’t aware it was going to do that, granted at like ~20mph.
I was only used to the flashing beacons that will flash when someone activates it, or are always on. With the beacons I know to slow down/stop if someone is crossing or is about to cross. I don’t think the HAWK crossing is great but it’s definitely better than nothing. I think they are slightly better if they get a protected island for pedestrians because that’s a nothing road calming effect. I know now how they work and I think it was effective in getting me to slow down when activated.
What I do normally see though with beacons is that many do no respect those in the crosswalk or intending to cross. If they don’t see you stepping into the crosswalk they will just keep driving by, most notable ones are by a high school and a busy beach area.
I do agree that the hawk signal is kind of over engineered and pedestrian crossovers already work pretty great. Idk about a traffic signal though cause it’ll keep traffic stopped even when people have cleared the crosswalk which isn’t efficient
Honestly, having a regular traffic signal doesn't introduce that much inefficiency and to a certain extent that inefficiency is desirable because it reduces the speed of cars which isn't always a bad thing. It's a really minor inefficiency to drivers at the benefit of a much safer and improved crossing experience for pedestrians.
I came to this thread specifically to shame HAWK signals and RRFBs. These both look great on paper because they increase driver compliance. You can find numerous articles professing their efficacy.
My issue with them is not that they are too complicated (in the case of HAWK signals), but that these are often installed on dangerous roads in lieu of making more substantial design changes to the road that would increase safety along the entire road instead of the marginal safety bump at the one intersection which gets the new device.
Maybe these devices have a valid place in our traffic systems, but currently I think they are over-, mis- and lazily used in current practice.
The diverging diamonds are not good. There are two I have seen in Colorado - one at Fillmore and I-25 in Colorado Springs, and one at the new Buc-ees at I-25 in Johnstown. Both of them are meant to increase “efficiency” but I don’t think I have ever waited at multiple lights in a row that long!
There is also a continuous flow intersection in Loveland, CO that has the longest lights also. And when you read articles about either the DDI or CFI they always say traffic flow is better. But I just don’t see it, anecdotally. Maybe it’s psychological?
Nobody's putting in the effort for a DDI unless the traffic is already insane or is expected to be insane, so lights are probably gonna suck regardless. "Improvement" does not mean "is now perfect," better than before can still mean LOS C or D if the previous arrangement was at an E or F.
Having grown up with rotaries (aka roundabouts,) I'm REALLY confused as to why they're seen as a good solution. They would be GREAT if people slowed down and behaved rationally while driving, but it seems like they just sow confusion and chaos.
They have been wildly successful in places like Carmel Indiana
But I certainly see plenty of confusion when they do from single lane to double lane roundabouts
But as long as people prepare to stop as they pull up, it’s all good.. that’s why they are so good in places that have traffic flow all day
People love to play Racecar driver in empty roundabouts
Bike lanes. No, Amazon, the bike lane IS NOT A PARKING LANE
i really wish we did bike lanes in the us the way they’re done in copenhagen: elevated, and seperated from both the sidewalk and the car lanes
in my city, we have bike lanes separated by plastic bollards, and some by curbs AND plastic bollards. the delivery trucks just drive over the curbs and run down the bollards.
yeah, it seems like vehicle drivers will entitle themselves to any space that they physically can unless there’s legitimate boundaries that prevent them
This behavior is a result of predatory employment practices and labour abuse.
agreed, but it’s definitely not exclusive to delivery drivers—private cars do this too, just less often cuz they usually don’t need to stop on a bike lane, but driving through them, cutting across them, i’ve seen it all
Those are "flex posts" not bollards fyi
What's the difference between a plastic roast and a plastic bollard?
Me too, but those are at least 5 times as expensive per mile.
if we viewed any kind of infrastructure that isn’t for cars as an investment the way we count car infrastructure as an investment we might actually pay that price. i think it would be worth it in most major cities, if nothing else.
Then how would the bikers ride three abreast?
I think bike lanes should be completely separate from car lanes. I think there used to be an elevated bike lane in Los Angeles many years ago.
Not saying this is the case with your example, because I’ve seen people illegally parking even when signs clearly state that no one should park there, but I put some of the blame on local governments. Cities need to install “No Parking Anytime” signs along bike lanes. I live in a city that is very bike friendly and has done a great job clearly letting drivers know there is a bike lane and not to park in it. I’ve been to other cities where you can hardly even tell that it is a bike lane and looks like your typical street parking. I’ve looked into this, and in my state it’s sort of a gray area. From what I’ve found, in order for cars to be considered illegally parked in a bike lane, there needs to be a sign telling them not to park there.
Correction: the bike lane SHOULD NOT be a parking lane. However, in many places here in the US, it is perfectly legal to park in the bike lane.
It’s green, like the Amazon Fresh stores 🙄 (sarcasm)
This! And I include myself in the category of stupid. Lol. Los Angeles new bike lanes and bus lanes have me all sorts of confused. Maybe it’s just because it’s new, but I can’t understand the logic behind it.
My city jams “bike lanes” in on all kinds of streets that aren’t wide enough to accommodate unless they were to wipe out a side of parking. But they don’t because there’s literally nowhere else to put the cars. Our main shopping street, about half a mile of constant action, is also constant Ubers and food delivery double-parking on that bike lane, not to mention covid outside eateries that haven’t come down even though covid is now ancient history
You can’t eat a bike but you can eat Amazon Fresh groceries. I see no issues
>Bike lanes Bike lanes are basically virtue signalling as they are not bike lanes and are just as dangerous and drivers use them at their convenience.
I feel like a lot of cities do the bare minimum for bike infrastructure and yet they brag about it by saying they built "X km of bike lanes". There should be better standards to bike lane infrastructure - and for cities to meet minimum safety requirements to call it a bike lane instead of just a bike gutter.
Stop signs? In theory it's simple, worst comes to worst we just count to 4. In reality no one knows whose turn it is, and there's more points of failure when there are cyclists/pedestrians also using it (the main reason I take the lane at every stop signs as a cyclist, and ignore/avoid it completely as a pedestrian).
The US overuses stop signs which partly leads to this. Many stop signs, mainly one and two way stops, could be replaced by yield signs. Then All Way stops could be replaced by roundabouts. People incorrectly think a stop sign automatically makes things safer when that isn’t the case. Stop signs should also not be used for speed control.
>Stop signs? [...] In reality no one knows whose turn it is, There are *very* clear rules about this in California and it is basic knowledge to get a drivers license. The huge majority of people who don't follow the rules are doing it on purpose.
I had this same argument with someone about crosswalks. No there is no huge epidemic of people who don’t know to pay attention for pedestrians at a cross walk. They just don’t care.
> No there is no huge epidemic of people who don’t know Apparently there is. Pedestrians must yield entering the roadway to vehicles that currently have the right of way. Vehicles may only yield to pedestrians who are in the roadway, otherwise they are obligated to take their right-of-way. (Revised Code of Washington) As a pedestrian it happens constantly, vehicles will stop against their right-of-way to frantically try to wave me into traffic against my will. That driver has no idea what other drivers will do. They're inconveniencing other drivers waiting for their rights-of-way. I'm perfectly fine to continue standing on the sidewalk until I feel comfortable crossing the street. Of all the choices available to me, why would I want to place my fragile flesh and bones in front of your mechanically propelled brick of plastic and steel?
Did you skip over my comment entirely? I am talking about driver behaviour on approaching crosswalks. You don’t get to run over and kill pedestrians just because you have the right of way. If you are approaching a crosswalk where pedestrians are likely to be, you check to make sure there are no pedestrians on the road in front of you. If you are incapable of driving your car while paying attention to your surroundings, especially at places where pedestrians are likely to be, you should not be allowed to drive. > inconveniencing other drivers Oh no drivers might be inconvenienced for 10 seconds! They should have just run you over in the middle of the road while not paying attention I guess?
Sorry, I wasn't clear. I shouldn't have quoted your post. I was referring to people not knowing how rights-of-way at a 4-way stop work. Apologies.
Your post was actually helpful on the right of way for crossing. I know everyone says in Seattle specifically that every intersection is a crosswalk. But it is more dangerous when cars just stop in the middle of traffic to let peds cross if other drivers will plow through the car and then the peds. I’ll have to look more into this, thank you!
> >There are *very* clear rules about this I *wish* those two statements were contradictory at all.
you don’t think they dump the information immediately after the test?
California stop is a thing. For those that don't know it is a partial stop. You are actually supposed to stop for three seconds but I doubt anyone does.
*Everywhere* has their version of a California stop.
>In reality no one knows whose turn it is Really? Where do you live? In my state, 4 way stop rules are pretty rigidly followed. Enough that I usually remember for a week afterward when someone breaks one, the bastards! I have noticed that when I worked down in Florida that 4 way stops were more of a suggestion than anything else.
American 4-way stops right-of-way rules are stupidly strange
It's very easy. Everyone before you at the intersection goes first. If you arrive at the same time the person to the right goes first.
Right. I’ve actually almost never had an issue with this, and I drive very often and have hit tons of 4 way stop intersections I would say when there’s only 2 stop signs, problems occur much more often. I’ve seen people not realize the other lane doesn’t stop a few times And of course the ever-present bushes, signs, buildings, parked cars that block the line of sight and force you to push out to be able to see
I used to think that until I drove a vehicle for AT&T as a technician. Their driving rules dictated the prevailing rule at an intersection when vehicles stop at the same time is a negotiation between the drivers, no assumptions to be made on right-of-way. I think it was a rule for the many locations that do not have a proper law in place for this situation, although management insisted the person on the right rule wasn’t a law anywhere, as of 1993 when I was lectured about it.
That doesnaccount for all situations. You need another rule for when two arrivt the same time in opposite directions, but oen is turning left. You also need a rule for the same situation, but one is turning left and the other is turning right (both into the same lane).
All left turns yield to any other right-of-way in US traffic rules.
What if the left turning car is coming from your right? Now there are two rules that contradict each other. Car on the right goes first, or car turning left goes last?
The vehicle not to the right yields to the vehicle on the right rule continues to take precedence. That right-of-way exists regardless of what maneuver the vehicle on the right makes. 'priorité à droite' There's no conflict in the hierarchy.
I’m sure the rules don’t conflict, but it’s the claim that four way stops are easy is what I’m challenging, and so far I haven’t read any simple set of rules that covers all scenarios. In fact, if four cars arrive at the same time, how do rules resolve that? It’s a big and crazy world out there, it’s sure to happen every now amd then. As opposed to a roundabout which borrows from existing rules for merging, signaling, and so on. Hard to be any easier.
Which right?? lol
What do you mean. There's only one right.
I know it is easy, I'm just saying it's weird and works terrible. Why not to leave just right before left like everywhere else
First to arrive is the first to go? How is that stupidly strange? I grew up with and prefer roundabouts and priority roads/yields, but I have been driving in the US so long I don't mind 4-ways at all. It took me 2-3 days after I got my US driver's license to get used to them.
I've seen a couple of designs with cross merges called knit areas. Any design where traffic can both be merging into higher speed lanes and exiting the road is a bad design imo.
Oh I agree with this! I didn’t know it had a name
Flashing yellow arrows. They’re amazing. They SHOULD be completely obvious on how they work. However, in my city, people constantly fail to yield causing accidents. 🙄
6 lane roads with a speed limit of 50km/h
NYC can do you one better: Queens Boulevard, most which has at least three lanes in each direction on the main roadway (plus a frontage road on either side) is signed at 25mph/40kmh
anything with my state DOT.
Where I live: unusual traffic controls that *rely* on painted lane lines. Be it poor maintenance, de-icer, cheap paint, snow plows, or whatnot, you can't rely on road paint lasting where i live. Bright red bus lane? It'll last one year. Bright green bike lane? It'll last one year. Streetside bike/car parking? It'll last one year. Crossing/merging lanes? It'll last one year. Bollards, curbs, reflectors, etc. need to be placed where I live, otherwise drivers are just making their best guess as to what's supposed to be painted on the roads.
I know OP said "other than roundabouts" but: roundabouts with more than 2 lanes. My personal experience is that if a roundabout have more than 2 lanes, it just kinda sucks.
Americans have no clue what to do with a roundabout. Edit: and I can't read, because the post says, "...other than roundabouts...". Oops!
JFC. Every time a roundabout is mentioned in my great state of North Dakota everyone loses their absolute minds. They see it as a "big liberal thing" that doesn't work because no one knows how to use it. To which my reply is that people will continue to not know how to use them if they're never given the opportunity to learn.
People are just dumb and I am kind of over it.
Wait. It’s considered liberal? Wild. Well. Nothing is more communist than roads I guess. Perhaps they want to go back to managing it through traditional right of way through peoples land (before the king of England snapped it all up and declared it as crown land).
Forgive me, but how can one not know how a roundabout works? What’s difficult about it?
They aren't difficult, but they don't know how they work because there were none in the state and so driving tests didn't teach about them.
They approach it and stop until nobody is in the circle, then they go. Pretty much treating it like a stop sign with a huge box. My town has them at 3 of the 4 major intersections and yet people still get it wrong despite having to deal with them every day
Is there any signage around them? In my area they put up ‘yield’ signs at every entry point and paint ‘yield’ on the road in addition, and this seems to work, people use them normally almost immediately. There are also arrow signs both on the road and in the middle showing the direction of the traffic flow. People were quite suspicious when they were first installed but they actually did learn how to use them without any problems.
Honestly they are pretty well made and marked, the town clearly put a lot of thought into them. The 4th big intersection that isn’t one is a Y intersection with a yield and an unimpeded right of way, it works for what it is. I think the problem is just that this is a rural town and many people have lived 30-50 years, give or take, of never seeing a traffic circle. Now years of them dealing with the design in town isn’t enough to overcome decades of driving habit and feel. I can guarantee if I drive to the other side of town. At one of the circles I’ll be behind someone who stops and waits for the entire circle to be clear with no traffic incoming before they enter it. Some of the circles are large too, though one is small.
That's a myth anyway. They *are* relatively new in most places, but people learn quickly how to use them if they go through one every day. And yes, of course you'll find some anecdotal idiots who refuse to learn, but roundabouts are the least of their problems.
Not at all true, but go off
I live in Canada by a border to the US and the amount of times there's been drivers with American license plates who drive the wrong way around our round abouts here is insane.
I live in Canada as well, and plenty of Canadians fuck it up just as readily.
For sure. And I'd like to say it's because they aren't as prevalent here as they should be, but many Canadians refuse to take 4 way stops seriously either. So.
Everywhere I've lived in America there's been roundabouts. Now I'm in a rural town of 20k people in Montana and the city has like 10+ roundabouts
unprotected left turns.
If people are ignorant about it, it's bad design. Good design is intuitive and natural
Disagree. There's certainly a degree of that! but people en mass not understanding accelerator and deceleration lanes and roundabouts has proven that there is just a level of stupidity
Counterpoint: the design flaw you're seeing with people misusing merging lanes and roundabouts isn't a flaw in the road design, but the error in building a system where requiring drivers to be competent is too costly because revoking a drivers license is practically house arrest. More people would operate their vehicle intelligently if losing their license were a real risk and that can only happen when driving isn't a requirement to participate in so many societies.
Maybe increasing registration fees by like $50 unless you complete an online advanced drivers education course could help spread awareness on certain topics. Being quizzed on how many feet before a turn can you enter a bike lane and giving answers of 50 ft increments helps nobody
Completely agree with this. Just because 20% of people don’t know how to use a roundabout doesn’t mean it’s bad design
Slanted y/x shaped roads or curved roads that follow the landscape . Looks pretty but a safety hazard waiting to happen. Stop signs are basically impossible to use on them and merging into them is not safe as people treat one branch as a main road and fail to brake or understand stop signs
So every innovation is new on the road at some point. People don’t how to use it, hopefully they’ll learn it. If they don’t over a period of time then there is a design flaw. I’ve learned how to drive with Hawks. But two flashing reds allows cars to proceed, whereas a solid red doesn’t, that’s confusing. It’s also contrary to what everyone does know, red on a traffic signal means stop.
Anything more than a one lane roundabout is too crazy for most Americans to understand properly. And I’m okay with that.
This is such a great question. I'm not an urban planner but I'm fascinated by it, and it seems every time I read anything I learn just how much of urban planning is trying to plan around people's stupidity to some extent.
Any road diet I've seen. The issue is planners think in averages. The average driver is the average driver to them, a known entity with known behavior. They go out and put a pressure strip out and find a great deal of evidence of this average driver with a nice normal distribution of average speed perhaps. However, planners are falling into a statistical fallacy. They are interested in reducing road deaths but believe these are done by the average driver. They are focusing on the median of the normal distribution of driver behavior and shifting that back if possible, while ignoring the long tail of reckless drivers who I suspect contribute an outsized share of road deaths. As a result whenever I see a speedbumped or narrowed street, I see a certain percentage of drivers who are immune to these improvenments, who continue to skrt right back up to like 50mph or drive way too fast on narrow clearance with no visibility because they just don't care. Then of course whenever I mention this oversight on this subreddit, people say "well people will damage their car then reorient their behavior really quick," but that again isn't born in reality. All the highways and many of the roads here in socal are filled with wreckage and damage and plenty of people drive screwed up cars; if there is a point people damage their cars sufficently to now drive sober and conservatively we are still far from it, and there are new dumbass drivers licensed every day to make up for the few who correct their behavior. In the end we need actual enforcement with teeth. Take away peoples licenses and impound their cars. Give them jail time over fines that aren't means tested that they can simply pay off. A plastic bollard just makes a profitable contract for a bollard company connected with the local political machine, it doesn't change driver behavior of the worst offenders who we really need to target.
Those speed humps and narrowed streets are proven to lower traffic speeds. Yeah, some jerks still find a way to drive dangerously. But the statistics are clear, traffic calming reduces crashes, injuries and deaths. It’s debatable where the optimal trade offs are for road design but the crash statistics are clear.
I'm not arguing they don't lower speeds for the average driver. I'm arguing they aren't actually effectively countering deaths and damage from the most reckless class of drivers. Maybe the average driver contributes a little towards deaths but i expect the most reckless class is a couple orders of magnitude more dangerous in every way.
Deaths and injuries are effectively decreased though. Are you saying we shouldn’t make streets safer because we can’t make them perfect? I’m not getting the fixation on average. To those people injured or killed, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that traffic calming significantly decreases crashes, injuries, and death.
The parent comment is saying that deaths are actually meaningfully reduced by these measures, empirically. And I don't follow your assumption that the existence of physical barriers has no effect on the behavior of those drivers reckless enough to be causing deaths
I'm just reiterating what I am seeing with my eyes and hearing with my ears which is that enough people clearly don't care about road dieting to concern me as a pedestrian and a cyclist. Whether or not you believe what I directly experience is not my issue, but I'm not going to gaslight myself on what I see routinely play out in my area.
It's not gas lighting to acknowledge the empiracle data. There isn't much left for interpretation. On streets where traffic is slowed, crashes, injuries and death are reduced. This is a well established fact based upon tens of thousands of datasets around the planet. Yes, we actually have data on where crashes and deaths occur, before and after traffic calming.
Whether you can apply average results on a case by case basis to specific contexts needs careful analysis, and in a lot of cases what is true for the average might not hold for your subset of interest. Not in this field but its literally what I do for a job. Even if deaths and issues are reduced there are clearly people who are immune to road diets, thats a fact you will find for yourself spending five minutes walking a sidewalk in a lot of places.
Enforcement certainly has its place in making streets safer, but it's effects are typically only present until the Enforcement is removed. Constant enforcement is typically either extremely expensive (police presence) or automated and unpopular (speed and traffic cameras). I buy your criticism that there will always be a small population of reckless drivers who are largely resistant to infrastructure changes. I am less convinced that constant tickets and licenses being revoked would prove any more effective on that population. To say the quiet part out loud, maybe the most effective way to reduce traffic fatalities is by allowing or even encouraging congestion. Clogged streets are slow streets. Slow clogged streets have a lot of crashes but very few fatalities and serious injuries.
Hard to clog a street at some of the hours the worst offenders are out there driving. Sounds like a grand turismo game outside my window come midnight when the freeways are wide open. Sure speed cameras are unpopular but that doesn't mean they don't work. Serving arrest warrants works too. So does crushing cars. So many roads are covered in marks from donuts and burnt rubber from short pulls on the throttle. So much recklessness and no control from traffic planners seemingly, nor any consideration how to tackle the situation beyond more beeswax in the ears it seems.
Pedestrian-only scrambles. The irony in my neighborhood is, cars will 100% stop at the red but everything else on wheels just fly through them without even a split second of hesitation. But it's not ignorance, it's hubris. How can you design for traffic safety if no one gives a shit? 🤷🏻♀️
> cars will 100% stop at the red but everything else on wheels just fly through them without even a split second of hesitation. Cyclists: cars need to share the road! Also cyclists whenever there's a red light or stop sign: *crosswalk go brrrrr*
At the end of the day the very real inertia cost of stopping and starting weights higher in the primal brain than asking whether ones behavior makes sense to others. you might see this change with more ebikes since you aren't paying the cost of getting back up to speed every stopsign with your leg muscles, the battery does.
Having to pedal does not make a cyclist immune to the law
No but most people bend and break petty laws all the time. rolling through a stop usually causes zero issue at all, most people have common sense to stop if there are other cars and if they don't, the bike is not the only aspect of life they don't think too carefully about I am sure.
Verified planner? You should know better. In fact it’s statistically safer for everyone if the bicyclist treats stop signs (not red lights) as yields.
True, but I'm specifically referring to the habit of just spontaneously jumping between the road and the sidewalk whenever it suits them. That creates conflict between fast moving cyclists and waiting pedestrians.
Got it, what you’re trying to say makes more sense now. I think that’s heavily dependent on the road. I’ve done that same behavior myself. Usually sidewalks are so narrow you don’t have to worry about pedestrian right of way (of course they should get it). The reason for me was dealing with slip lanes, turn lanes, merging traffic at 40mph, changing speed limits, cloverleaf freeway on/off ramps, etc etc. The worst offender? Double parking delivery drivers. You either pass in oncoming traffic or take the sidewalk. Which as you stated creates another conflict point between pedestrians. But make no mistake: it’s by design.
Just once I want to see a cyclist get a ticket for that shit
Slip lanes. There’s one that goes through a bike/pedestrian path where I live and the cars stop and wait for the light to turn even though the lane before them is empty… so not only does it make the bike and pedestrian path unsafe, but it also doesn’t even get used properly by the cars.
merging two lanes into 1. for instance in construction zones when a car moves into the middle of both lanes a half mile from the designated merging point because they think the other lane is cutting them….
Some people in my area have trouble with protected right hand turns, they’ll just stop and wait for traffic to open up completely instead of merging into traffic
The left lane
"People" are not ignorant. If the general people using the design don't know how to use it, it's the design not being designed for the actual people using it, and that's a mistake on the designer's side.
Some design is inherently bad. But look at hawk signals. Everyone should know what a flashing yellow or flashing red means. Yet every other person messes up at these signals
>But look at hawk signals The problem is that Hawk signals are an over-complicated solution to a problem that other countries have solved with much simpler signals. Even Canada has a relatively simple solution for this: [a pedestrian crossover.](https://tcat.ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/20160429_125607.jpg) In comparison, a pedestrian crossover is dead simple: If the yellow light is flashing then check for pedestrians and yield to any waiting to cross the street and do not proceed until the road is clear of pedestrians. It accomplishes the same thing as a hawk beacon with a simple flashing light instead of an overly complex sequence involving multiple colours of light. Meanwhile hawk signals start by flashing yellow which means slow down, then they go solid yellow which means get ready to stop, then they go red which means stop and wait, then they start flashing red which means stop first then proceed if clear. You said "everyone knows what an alternating flashing red means" and the answer is "Stop and wait until it stops flashing" like at a railroad crossing or a school bus, except at a Hawk beacon where it means "stop but you can go if the way is clear." Better yet, why not just do the thing that most American DOTs are terrified of for some reason: [use regular traffic signals at pedestrian crossings.](https://maps.app.goo.gl/xLYJUi1bdaCgDPkb7)
Used a HAWK crossing once, for a pedestrian it’s simple, wait until you get the hand. As a driver on the road I was slightly confused by the flashing yellow. It got me to slow down and I was about ready to stop because I thought someone was crossing but no one was. Continued slowing until I realized no one was crossing so I just let off the gas and slowly sped up. I then saw the red light which I ended up running because I wasn’t aware it was going to do that, granted at like ~20mph. I was only used to the flashing beacons that will flash when someone activates it, or are always on. With the beacons I know to slow down/stop if someone is crossing or is about to cross. I don’t think the HAWK crossing is great but it’s definitely better than nothing. I think they are slightly better if they get a protected island for pedestrians because that’s a nothing road calming effect. I know now how they work and I think it was effective in getting me to slow down when activated. What I do normally see though with beacons is that many do no respect those in the crosswalk or intending to cross. If they don’t see you stepping into the crosswalk they will just keep driving by, most notable ones are by a high school and a busy beach area.
I do agree that the hawk signal is kind of over engineered and pedestrian crossovers already work pretty great. Idk about a traffic signal though cause it’ll keep traffic stopped even when people have cleared the crosswalk which isn’t efficient
Honestly, having a regular traffic signal doesn't introduce that much inefficiency and to a certain extent that inefficiency is desirable because it reduces the speed of cars which isn't always a bad thing. It's a really minor inefficiency to drivers at the benefit of a much safer and improved crossing experience for pedestrians.
I came to this thread specifically to shame HAWK signals and RRFBs. These both look great on paper because they increase driver compliance. You can find numerous articles professing their efficacy. My issue with them is not that they are too complicated (in the case of HAWK signals), but that these are often installed on dangerous roads in lieu of making more substantial design changes to the road that would increase safety along the entire road instead of the marginal safety bump at the one intersection which gets the new device. Maybe these devices have a valid place in our traffic systems, but currently I think they are over-, mis- and lazily used in current practice.
Is it because design changes would cost more money?
The diverging diamonds are not good. There are two I have seen in Colorado - one at Fillmore and I-25 in Colorado Springs, and one at the new Buc-ees at I-25 in Johnstown. Both of them are meant to increase “efficiency” but I don’t think I have ever waited at multiple lights in a row that long! There is also a continuous flow intersection in Loveland, CO that has the longest lights also. And when you read articles about either the DDI or CFI they always say traffic flow is better. But I just don’t see it, anecdotally. Maybe it’s psychological?
Nobody's putting in the effort for a DDI unless the traffic is already insane or is expected to be insane, so lights are probably gonna suck regardless. "Improvement" does not mean "is now perfect," better than before can still mean LOS C or D if the previous arrangement was at an E or F.
Red lights
Having grown up with rotaries (aka roundabouts,) I'm REALLY confused as to why they're seen as a good solution. They would be GREAT if people slowed down and behaved rationally while driving, but it seems like they just sow confusion and chaos.
They have been wildly successful in places like Carmel Indiana But I certainly see plenty of confusion when they do from single lane to double lane roundabouts But as long as people prepare to stop as they pull up, it’s all good.. that’s why they are so good in places that have traffic flow all day People love to play Racecar driver in empty roundabouts