Do you know how many times I've almost been hit by a car doing a rolling stop while running? We should absolutely use technology to prevent this.
I'm honestly not convinced by this line of reasoning at all. Most laws exist for a reason and should be followed. Or if they're bad laws, they should be changed.
The pressure on the law to break it -- compared to stop lights, where almost no one does -- does reveal that there is something bad about the law. The positive effects are:
- encourage turn taking
- help pedestrians in the 1% of urban areas where there actually are any
- bright line rule that's easy for police to enforce
- keep people from getting complacent about cross traffic
The negative effects are
- a complete stop takes more time than is needed to ensure the intersection is clear, which is a constant daily time drain and a reminder that you are following the rule because others will punish you and not because it's a good idea.
Being lax on the rolling stops and just doing enforcement around those busy areas and high-speed stop sign ignorers seems like a nice equilibrium to keep the good effects and minimize the bad ones. Maybe nicer than we could achieve by letting the kind of people who participate in politics revisit the issue.
Do you live in an urban area so dense that you can't wait for cars to clear the intersection before you run out in front?
> Do you live in an urban area so dense that you can't wait for cars to clear the intersection before you run out in front?
Every now and then I bump into someone like this who realizes that they're breaking the law and in the wrong, then tries to tell me I should still change my behaviour because they might kill me anyway.
I bet you do bump into them, by not taking common precautions to keep out of their way. But I was always trained to behave as though cars couldn't see me, not because they might decide to break the law but just because you never know.
It's striking to me that the difference for you between "my time is too important to stop" and "I was always trained to stop anyway" is just whether it's you or someone else that would get hurt from your actions.
No, I think stop signs are a horrible design flaw that we have to live with, and rolling stops are the least bad way to work around that urban design flaw.
It is asinine to force arbitrary stops at random intersections that have no time-of-day or traffic sensitivity (i.e. am I alone on the roads at 2AM, or are children walking to school at 8AM). Or to put them at intersections with clear cross visibility (what exactly is the stop for?). Or the 4-way stop sign mess.
It is totally reasonable to require full stops in the latter case, but silly in the former. Unfortunately, stop signs make no distinction between the two.
The only reason to fully stop at stop signs is actually the a pillar / b pillar blind spots, or obstructed view from the road. If you were hypothetically driving an open top car in an open neighborhood (or a motorcycle, bike, scooter, moped), there's no new "information" you'll gain by fully stopping rather than slowing down (where as if you have an A/B pillar blind spot, a full stop can give someone time to appear from behind it).
> - a complete stop takes more time than is needed to ensure the intersection is clear, which is a constant daily time drain and a reminder that you are following the rule because others will punish you and not because it's a good idea.
A minor inconvenience to increase safety. It's also a time drain that your speed is limited but you see clearly the benefits of that, you are just against completely stopping because of a perceived sense of lost efficiency with your time.
> Being lax on the rolling stops and just doing enforcement around those busy areas and high-speed stop sign ignorers seems like a nice equilibrium to keep the good effects and minimize the bad ones.
This is what creates complacency over time, a driver gets used on doing rolling stops because they judge the intersections they cross as not so busy, over time they keep pushing that and normalising it, until complacency sets in and one day they do a rolling stop at the wrong time/place. If one is strict about doing it as often as possible it just becomes second nature and not a conscious decision.
It's unfortunate that America needs to drive so much and educate its drivers so little, traffic in the USA is just a little bit better than places like Brazil, and absolutely nowhere close to the civilised traffic I experiece in Sweden, the Netherlands, Norway, Denmark, Germany, etc.
Germany and its very car-centric society does a much better job on educating responsible drivers than the USA.
> .. a reminder that you are following the rule because others will punish you and not because it's a good idea.
It's a bad idea according to you. Do you have actual data that proves rolling stop provides sufficient utility that a stop sign is supposed to provide?
There does not exist a single society today or in history where every single member of the said society agrees with every single rule governing them. If you are only prevented from following your society's various rules because of 'fear of punishment' then you sir are a frustrated anti-social. It's not supposed to be because of "fear".
> time drain
Ridiculous. Traffic safety is more important that your illusory 'loss' of whatever handful of minutes per day.
Near is a high visibility T junction with 3 stop signs. A couple of blocks down the smaller street (off the main street) is a school, and the junction is where some kids cross. There is ALWAYS a crossing guard with a giant hand held stop sign and reflective vest that will walk out into the junction so the kids can cross. This happens roughly 4 hours a day (2 in morning, 2 in mid afternoon) for, usually, 5 days a week, about ~9 months a year.
There is absolutely no reason what so ever to even stop at the stop sign during the __off hours__ when on the main road with the right-a-way. It shouldn't even be there if not for school hours. There are 2 main 4-way crossings a few streets to either side of the main junction for anyone wanting to cross at a cross walk in a sleepy suburb on the outer edge of a metro area. A rolling stop is more than generous at that time.
My experience of driving in the US is that stop signs are used a lot, so people get numb and treat them as Give Way/Yield signs (where you don't need to come to a dead stop, but must give way to any oncoming traffic).
In the UK, Stop signs are only used when there is limited visibility/blind corners, so if you see one, you know that you definitely need to stop. Once you step and creep forward, you'll realise why a stop sign was needed.
> Do you know how many times I've almost been hit by a car doing a rolling stop while running? We should absolutely use technology to prevent this.
Technology that enforces full stops at every stop sign won't be smarter than human drivers. It won't know if you're not stopping because you need to get away from a tornado/serial killer/car accident/literally any other hazard, or you need to rush through in order to get a hospital/save a life/keep your bus above a certain speed or else it will explode/etc.
Brain-dead enforcement of any rule is a disaster waiting to happen. Life is complicated and full of edge cases. People should be allowed to use their brains when it comes to operating cars just like they should be punished when they fail to. Don't be so quick to give up everyone's freedom just so that you can feel a little more safe when jogging.
I'm honestly not convinced by this line of reasoning at all. Most laws exist for a reason and should be followed. Or if they're bad laws, they should be changed.