As an Australian I find 4-way stop signs to be a form of madness. They don’t exist here. Put an island in the middle and call it a roundabout, or just choose an arbitrary street to have right of way. Either change makes the rules entirely objective.
I’ve driven in the US and Canada, and I never understood the 4-way stop sign. Why do they exist? Non rhetorical question.
They're good in residential areas with smaller streets - one lane in each direction, and cars on the sides of the road.
With a 4-way stop sign everything works well, and traffic stays slow since you're not going more than one block without stopping: no room to accelerate to fast speeds. Roundabouts take a lot of space. 2-way stops are dangerous because traffic can be going a bit fast for the small roads, and visibility is low. There's a two way stop near my house and it's always hard to see if another car is coming, until they're almost inside the intersection. Most of the intersections in the area are 4-way and they just work.
These are hillarious when they do implement them in the US. People stop anyway to yield. If anything it makes it a little more dicey to bike through because people also don’t signal when they are exiting.
> Put an island in the middle and call it a roundabout, or just choose an arbitrary street to have right of way. Either change makes the rules entirely objective.
1. What is not objective about "everyone stops"?
2. Picking an arbitrary street to have right of way doesn't sound objective to me!
If you're talking about what happens when multiple people approach, there are rules for that, just like rules are necessary when multiple people are using a roundabout at the same time.
1. It’s not the stopping that’s a problem, it’s the starting. You have to track up to three other vehicles to ensure they have the same perception and are following the same rules as you are. Either of my alternatives significantly reduces this problem.
2. The choice of priority road, once made, makes it not arbitrary. The point is to reduce the complexity of the intersection, by giving one road priority. For the purposes of my argument, it doesn’t matter which one.
3. Relying on the assumption that everyone knows how to act in a situation that requires evaluation of up to three other people’s perception and intention is dangerous and unnecessary.
We’re not talking about nightmare roundabouts like the “wheel of death” in my city, which are clearly not fit for purpose. We’re talking about roundabouts as an alternative to 4 way stop signs.
In a small residential roundabout there is a single lane going in a circle. Either you can safely enter the lane, or you can not. The roundabout serialises the traffic flow so that a driver entering the roundabout need only deal with the next vehicle in the lane. You don’t have to worry about the (potentially unsignalled) intent of any other drivers, make eye contact with them, time their arrival, etc.
To be honest though, I think you know all of this, and you’re simply engaging with me in bad faith.
> You don’t have to worry about the (potentially unsignalled) intent of any other drivers, make eye contact with them
It's very possible to have situations at a roundabout that aren't binary. It can be legitimately unclear if the person in the next entrance is going to enter the roundabout before you, especially because the exact moment a car counts as "in" the roundabout is a fuzzy measure that people could disagree on. If they're going slower than you, then whether you or they are supposed to yield can be unclear. So you have to handle their intent, not just follow a checklist.
This is a rare situation, but so is having to worry about the intent of other drivers at a 4 way stop.
> time their arrival
You definitely have to time the arrival at roundabouts. Cars can't stop instantly, so any situation that involves yielding means you have to time things.
> The roundabout serialises the traffic flow so that a driver entering the roundabout need only deal with the next vehicle in the lane.
You need to pay attention to other cars coming up too, the ones that will be in front you at the roundabout in addition to the cars that are in front of you while approaching the roundabout. This could easily be more than three.
And if a 4 way stop is experiencing a lot of traffic, it goes into a mode where cars alternate in pairs, so you only have to look at the turn signal of the car across you. This specific case is actually easier than a busy small roundabout!
> To be honest though, I think you know all of this, and you’re simply engaging with me in bad faith.
I'm not engaging in bad faith at all. You're overestimating the problems with 4 way stops, while arguing as if [small] roundabouts are perfect. Neither one is perfect, and neither one is dangerous.
It's not arbitrary. A large street will always get right of way. If there is a grid of smaller streets running through a suburb of similar size, it alternates so every second street is a stop sign.
4 way stops sound like bad design to me, it seems like it would leave room for an aggressive driver to take off when they're not first in to an intersection, bullying their way through.
Roundabouts and standard intersections in Australia do not suffer from this, as in both cases there is a clear right of way. If an accident happens, it's generally obvious who is at fault without the need for dash cam footage.
Take that up with the comment I replied to, because they specifically said to choose an arbitrary one.
> If there is a grid of smaller streets running through a suburb of similar size, it alternates so every second street is a stop sign.
So on the positive side that's fewer stops, on the negative side you still have a lot of stops and you have watch out for crossing full-speed traffic every other block.
I'm not saying that method is wrong, but it doesn't sound like a significant improvement.
> 4 way stops sound like bad design to me, it seems like it would leave room for an aggressive driver to take off when they're not first in to an intersection, bullying their way through.
Someone can bully through any small intersection.
> Roundabouts and standard intersections in Australia do not suffer from this, as in both cases there is a clear right of way. If an accident happens, it's generally obvious who is at fault without the need for dash cam footage.
Why would it be obvious less often in a 4 way stop? And since everybody stopped it should be extremely hard to have an accident without both parties being at fault.
And roundabouts do not have perfect clarity either. If I'm about to enter a roundabout, and someone on the crossing street is about to enter in front of me at a slower speed, it can be ambiguous who actually gets into the roundabout first and who has to yield.
That's a rare scenario, but so is confusion at a 4 way stop. If someone enters first, they get to leave first. If two people enter at the same time, the one on the right goes first.
As an immigrant myself, my first assumption had been that the oil industry had lobbied for it, since it's a perfect recipe for frequent, often unnecessary stops and fuel consumption.
My neighborhood (In the Seattle area) has intersections with small, 4 way roundabouts that are combined with 2 way stops (there’s a main street no stop with 2 side streets with stop signs)
Ha! I was about to comment the same. Sacramento has the exact same thing, I regularly heard car accidents on this corner when I lived there. https://goo.gl/maps/YR29vXMf4HnNawT68
Making a left turn? I lived there for 5 years and I still don’t know who has the right away
Combining a traffic circle with stop signs is a recipe for confusion.
One thing that Seattle has going for it here is it's very narrow streets, probably 1/2 the size of that intersection in Sacramento: https://goo.gl/maps/A1epH93AE8R28rZH7
That said, we also have 4-way intersections with no stop signs and no roundabouts. This is complete madness.
I’ve driven in the US and Canada, and I never understood the 4-way stop sign. Why do they exist? Non rhetorical question.