🙅 THE BAD IDEAS THREAD
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@coldandtired said in 🙅 THE BAD IDEAS THREAD:
Here they do both, it can mean not working but usually late at night they switch to flashing amber so you don't end up waiting at red lights when you're the only car around.
I think that's a thing only in lighter traffic areas. They do that in my town, but not in larger cities IME.
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Bad idea: eating food tainted with soap.
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@Mikael_Svahnberg said in 🙅 THE BAD IDEAS THREAD:
The situation described above is "System is working, but you're not heavy enough or carrying enough metal for it to notice you. You will die a horrible and lonely death waiting for this red light to turn green."
In this situation you get bonus points for blocking other people that would be detected by the system from getting close enough to it to be detected.
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@Mikael_Svahnberg said in 🙅 THE BAD IDEAS THREAD:
@coldandtired because flashing amber means "System is borked. Proceed with caution."
Iirc, around here there's a couple turn lights where if it's deliberately on flashing yellow. It's proceed with caution without the borked system part.
@PleegWat said in 🙅 THE BAD IDEAS THREAD:
@coldandtired It also has the side effect of making red light cameras completely unworkable. I wonder if that's intentional...
All they have to do is hang signs that say no proceeding on red. I've seen those specifically for right turns (right on red is allowed unless marked), because turning on red at those intersections is frequently a Bad Idea.
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@coldandtired said in 🙅 THE BAD IDEAS THREAD:
@djls45 said in 🙅 THE BAD IDEAS THREAD:
any red light in the whole state of Pennsylvania as a stop sign, even if cross-traffic has a green
Isn't this normal? One road has red and must stop while the perpendicular road has green?
Usually, but the perpendicular road might have a yellow.
Or a lane somewhere might have a green turn arrow, like an intersection that I have to go through where there's a pretty long red in all directions so that approximately nobody can take advantage of a really long green arrow. (To be fair, there's not a lot of traffic there anyway at around 10 PM when I'm generally there, but there's significantly more traffic in all the 3 other directions than there is in the direction that's getting the green arrow.)
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@coldandtired said in 🙅 THE BAD IDEAS THREAD:
usually late at night they switch to flashing amber so you don't end up waiting at red lights when you're the only car around.
They do that here also.
@Onyx said in 🙅 THE BAD IDEAS THREAD:
I think that's a thing only in lighter traffic areas. They do that in my town, but not in larger cities IME.
Larger cities do it too, but it's late at night on low-traffic streets.
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@coderpatsy said in 🙅 THE BAD IDEAS THREAD:
right on red is allowed unless marked
In CA, that also includes left-on-red if both roads are one-way.
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@dcon said in 🙅 THE BAD IDEAS THREAD:
@coderpatsy said in 🙅 THE BAD IDEAS THREAD:
right on red is allowed unless marked
In CA, that also includes left-on-red if both roads are one-way.
Plenty of other states also.
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@anotherusername said in 🙅 THE BAD IDEAS THREAD:
@coldandtired said in 🙅 THE BAD IDEAS THREAD:
usually late at night they switch to flashing amber so you don't end up waiting at red lights when you're the only car around.
They do that here also.
@Onyx said in 🙅 THE BAD IDEAS THREAD:
I think that's a thing only in lighter traffic areas. They do that in my town, but not in larger cities IME.
Larger cities do it too, but it's late at night on low-traffic streets.
Of the two stoplights I pass on my way to work, one could just as well flash yellow 22h/day...
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@Mikael_Svahnberg depends on how busy the intersection is.
Although, if it's almost never busy, it'd be cheaper to just put stop signs on the less-busy of the two streets.
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@lolwhat said in 🙅 THE BAD IDEAS THREAD:
@dcon said in 🙅 THE BAD IDEAS THREAD:
@coderpatsy said in 🙅 THE BAD IDEAS THREAD:
right on red is allowed unless marked
In CA, that also includes left-on-red if both roads are one-way.
Plenty of other states also.
Kind of figured that... This is actually one area I wish wasn't left to states to regulate. When doing a cross-country drive, you're always left in a state of "Am I in a state that allows it or not?"
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@dcon said in 🙅 THE BAD IDEAS THREAD:
When doing a cross-country drive, you're always left in a state of "Am I in a state that allows it or not?"
You don't see many one-way streets that cross other one-way streets, except in larger towns and cities. Besides, places have gotten better at posting NO TURN ON RED signs regardless of local turn-on-red laws.
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@dcon said in 🙅 THE BAD IDEAS THREAD:
@lolwhat said in 🙅 THE BAD IDEAS THREAD:
@dcon said in 🙅 THE BAD IDEAS THREAD:
@coderpatsy said in 🙅 THE BAD IDEAS THREAD:
right on red is allowed unless marked
In CA, that also includes left-on-red if both roads are one-way.
Plenty of other states also.
Kind of figured that... This is actually one area I wish wasn't left to states to regulate. When doing a cross-country drive, you're always left in a state of "Am I in a state that allows it or not?"
Right-on-reds and U-turns are both issues there.
The standard protocol for traffic lights in the US is
- Green means clear to go (with only the minimal checking for idiots running a red).
- Yellow means prepare to stop, but if you are already in the intersection (or on high-speed roads, too close to the intersection), you may continue to proceed.
- Red means stop and wait for a green. The only exceptions are for turns where you will not cross any other lanes of traffic (unless otherwise posted or local laws override) and for posted signage (e.g. construction work).
- Flashing yellow means caution, but you have the right to proceed.
- Flashing red means stop, and then proceed with caution. (Usually flashing lights are either paired with red in one direction and yellow in the other or all flashing red, in which case it's treated as a stop sign - each direction takes turns, one vehicle at a time.)
The problem with this new PA law is that it forces the cross-traffic to treat all green lights as flashing yellows, which will slow down traffic even more and increase traffic jams during busy periods. A simpler, cheaper, and better solution all around would have been either to change the problem lights to flashing red/yellow or just to set them to change more frequently.
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@dcon said in 🙅 THE BAD IDEAS THREAD:
@lolwhat said in 🙅 THE BAD IDEAS THREAD:
@dcon said in 🙅 THE BAD IDEAS THREAD:
@coderpatsy said in 🙅 THE BAD IDEAS THREAD:
right on red is allowed unless marked
In CA, that also includes left-on-red if both roads are one-way.
Plenty of other states also.
Kind of figured that... This is actually one area I wish wasn't left to states to regulate. When doing a cross-country drive, you're always left in a state of "Am I in a state that allows it or not?"
How often do your cross-country drives put you on one-way streets? Situations where you'd even have the opportunity to legally make a left on red are pretty rare.
Anyway, the safe bet is to just wait until the light turns green. A few seconds really won't make your cross-country drive that much longer.
@djls45 said in 🙅 THE BAD IDEAS THREAD:
flashing yellows, which ... slow down traffic
In what universe?!
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@anotherusername said in 🙅 THE BAD IDEAS THREAD:
@djls45 said in 🙅 THE BAD IDEAS THREAD:
flashing yellows, which ... slow down traffic
In what universe?!
Yeah, that never happens out here. lol
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@Erufael said in 🙅 THE BAD IDEAS THREAD:
@anotherusername said in 🙅 THE BAD IDEAS THREAD:
@djls45 said in 🙅 THE BAD IDEAS THREAD:
flashing yellows, which ... slow down traffic
In what universe?!
Yeah, that never happens out here. lol
I mean... I'm not even sure that should be true in an ideal universe.
A flashing yellow (should?) mean that the cross-traffic has a flashing red, and must stop. If they fail to stop, and hit you, they're automatically at fault. And since the light isn't about to stop or change soon, it should be pretty easy to document that you had the flashing yellow and they had the flashing red.
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@anotherusername Agreed. Out here it's meant to tell people that it may be a bad intersection cuz people are morons and think they can just go.
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@anotherusername the one I really hate is flashing red, because you don't know whether the cross-traffic has a flashing yellow, which means they don't have to stop, or also has flashing red, in which case it's an all-way stop.
Intersections with stop signs are pretty good about having "all-way stop" when it's an all-way stop, so when you have a stop sign you generally can know for sure whether the cross-traffic also has to stop. On a flashing red light, though, there's no good way to know.
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@dcon said in 🙅 THE BAD IDEAS THREAD:
@lolwhat said in 🙅 THE BAD IDEAS THREAD:
@dcon said in 🙅 THE BAD IDEAS THREAD:
@coderpatsy said in 🙅 THE BAD IDEAS THREAD:
right on red is allowed unless marked
In CA, that also includes left-on-red if both roads are one-way.
Plenty of other states also.
Kind of figured that... This is actually one area I wish wasn't left to states to regulate. When doing a cross-country drive, you're always left in a state of "Am I in a state that allows it or not?"
Uh, right on red is by-default allowed pretty much everywhere in the US except NYC.
ETA: Oh, left on red. Stupid folded quotes.
Fun fact: In Texas, there's lots of intersections with TWO right-turn lanes. Right on red, if no sign prohibiting it exists, is allowed from both lanes. Freaky the first few times.
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@FrostCat said in 🙅 THE BAD IDEAS THREAD:
Fun fact: In Texas, there's lots of intersections with TWO right-turn lanes. Right on red, if no sign prohibiting it exists, is allowed from both lanes. Freaky the first few times.
Same where I am.
You're right that all the states allow right turn on red... although in some states, it's prohibited on red arrows and only allowed on a round red signal. Other states don't differentiate between different red signals, allowing a right turn after stopping on any red light.
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@anotherusername said in 🙅 THE BAD IDEAS THREAD:
You're right that all the states allow right turn on red... although in some states, it's prohibited on red arrows and only allowed on a round red signal. Other states don't differentiate between different red signals, allowing a right turn after stopping on any red light.
Is there anything in the US that is actually standardised across the whole country?
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@coldandtired said in 🙅 THE BAD IDEAS THREAD:
@anotherusername said in 🙅 THE BAD IDEAS THREAD:
You're right that all the states allow right turn on red... although in some states, it's prohibited on red arrows and only allowed on a round red signal. Other states don't differentiate between different red signals, allowing a right turn after stopping on any red light.
Is there anything in the US that is actually standardised across the whole country?
Well, there's a federal law making illegal...
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@anotherusername said in 🙅 THE BAD IDEAS THREAD:
@anotherusername the one I really hate is flashing red, because you don't know whether the cross-traffic has a flashing yellow, which means they don't have to stop, or also has flashing red, in which case it's an all-way stop.
Out here, it's generally pretty obvious, since we only have those at intersections where a major road (state route, usually) meets a... Less major? Road. Are they used a bit more where you are?
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@Erufael I've seen both ways: one direction flashing red and the cross direction flashing yellow, or flashing red in both directions.
It's more of a problem if you're not already familiar with the intersection or area, so you won't necessarily know that one street is more major than the other.
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@anotherusername said in 🙅 THE BAD IDEAS THREAD:
It's more of a problem if you're not already familiar with the intersection or area, so you won't necessarily know that one street is more major than the other.
I suppose this is true. Usually it's given away by the roadsigns (we tell you when you're coming up to a State Route :) ), or the physical size or condition of the road. Still a valid observation, though.
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@anotherusername said in 🙅 THE BAD IDEAS THREAD:
It's more of a problem if you're not already familiar with the intersection or area, so you won't necessarily know that one street is more major than the other.
The prudent thing to do in this case, obviously, is assume the cross-traffic (if there is any; if not, of course, it doesn't matter) is not going to stop until such time as their behavior demonstrates otherwise.
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@HardwareGeek the fact that they're slowing down doesn't mean they're going to (or need to) stop, though. They could be slowing down because their light is flashing yellow (okay, that's unlikely), or because they're one of those assholes who has to come to a complete stop before they turn.
So basically you have to sit there until they either go through or come to a complete stop.
And if they had a brain fart and realized that their light was flashing yellow, and they didn't actually need to stop, and they start going again and they hit you... you're at fault.
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@coldandtired said in 🙅 THE BAD IDEAS THREAD:
@anotherusername said in 🙅 THE BAD IDEAS THREAD:
You're right that all the states allow right turn on red... although in some states, it's prohibited on red arrows and only allowed on a round red signal. Other states don't differentiate between different red signals, allowing a right turn after stopping on any red light.
Is there anything in the US that is actually standardised across the whole country?
I could discuss how standards were invented here (even though I don't know that one way or the other.
I can show the xkcd comic on standards:
But the only answer that is really relevant...
@coldandtired said in 🙅 THE BAD IDEAS THREAD:
Is there anything in the US that is actually standardised across the whole country?
No.
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@CoyneTheDup said in 🙅 THE BAD IDEAS THREAD:
@coldandtired said in 🙅 THE BAD IDEAS THREAD:
Is there anything in the US that is actually standardised across the whole country?
No.
What about federal taxes?
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@ben_lubar taxes aren't. If you pick out the specific taxes that are Federal, well... you could do that for a lot of things that aren't standardized across the whole country.
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Bad idea: Posting about something traffic related on TDWTF.
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@anotherusername said in 🙅 THE BAD IDEAS THREAD:
@coldandtired said in 🙅 THE BAD IDEAS THREAD:
@anotherusername said in 🙅 THE BAD IDEAS THREAD:
You're right that all the states allow right turn on red... although in some states, it's prohibited on red arrows and only allowed on a round red signal. Other states don't differentiate between different red signals, allowing a right turn after stopping on any red light.
Is there anything in the US that is actually standardised across the whole country?
Well, there's a federal law making illegal...
And the local laws that say fuck that.
The only thing standard is that there aren't any (cue xkcd - too lazy to link it)
edit:
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@coldandtired said in 🙅 THE BAD IDEAS THREAD:
a stop sign in the US doesn't mean 'stop', it means 'pause for a second'.
...given that stop signs are permanent signs that do not change... how else would you implement a stop sign that differs from a 'do not enter' sign?
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@dcon yeah, it was a joke...
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@Yamikuronue said in 🙅 THE BAD IDEAS THREAD:
@coldandtired said in 🙅 THE BAD IDEAS THREAD:
a stop sign in the US doesn't mean 'stop', it means 'pause for a second'.
...given that stop signs are permanent signs that do not change... how else would you implement a stop sign that differs from a 'do not enter' sign?
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@anotherusername And there we idiots go and invent
This is obviously better!
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@anotherusername said in 🙅 THE BAD IDEAS THREAD:
@Yamikuronue said in 🙅 THE BAD IDEAS THREAD:
@coldandtired said in 🙅 THE BAD IDEAS THREAD:
a stop sign in the US doesn't mean 'stop', it means 'pause for a second'.
...given that stop signs are permanent signs that do not change... how else would you implement a stop sign that differs from a 'do not enter' sign?
Missed one:
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@djls45 I'm assuming that's covered under
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@anotherusername That one could be read as "don't back up", as opposed to "don't turn around".
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@Onyx That won't work. Yours allows one to turn around, but in order to abide with the former one has to leave their car at the sign and go home on foot (preemptive pedantry - unless there's another road going diagonally from the intersection cropped from the picture).
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@djls45 said in 🙅 THE BAD IDEAS THREAD:
@anotherusername That one could be read as "don't back up", as opposed to "don't turn around".
Does driving backward circumvent traffic control signals? Can you drive in reverse the wrong direction on a one-way street?
"NO U TURN" doesn't mean you can't go in the other direction on the street. It just means that you're not allowed to make a U-turn.
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@anotherusername said in 🙅 THE BAD IDEAS THREAD:
@djls45 said in 🙅 THE BAD IDEAS THREAD:
@anotherusername That one could be read as "don't back up", as opposed to "don't turn around".
Does driving backward circumvent traffic control signals? Can you drive in reverse the wrong direction on a one-way street?
"NO U TURN" doesn't mean you can't go in the other direction on the street. It just means that you're not allowed to make a U-turn.
But how would that even work? A traffic sign applies forwards from the point where it is. If I haven't yet passed the sign, it doesn't apply to me, therefore, could only mean "no driving in reverse".
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@djls45 said in 🙅 THE BAD IDEAS THREAD:
@anotherusername said in 🙅 THE BAD IDEAS THREAD:
@djls45 said in 🙅 THE BAD IDEAS THREAD:
@anotherusername That one could be read as "don't back up", as opposed to "don't turn around".
Does driving backward circumvent traffic control signals? Can you drive in reverse the wrong direction on a one-way street?
"NO U TURN" doesn't mean you can't go in the other direction on the street. It just means that you're not allowed to make a U-turn.
But how would that even work? A traffic sign applies forwards from the point where it is. If I haven't yet passed the sign, it doesn't apply to me, therefore, could only mean "no driving in reverse".
No u-turn signs are frequently positioned so you wouldn't technically "pass" the sign by making a u-turn.
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@Yamikuronue White triangles on the road, like everywhere else?
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@coldandtired I mean, what else would you DO at such a stopsign?
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@Yamikuronue If I saw it here I wouldn't assume it meant 'give way' but 'stop until instructed otherwise'. E.g. for an accident or customs or something.
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@coldandtired said in 🙅 THE BAD IDEAS THREAD:
@Yamikuronue White triangles on the road, like everywhere else?
How visible are those in poor light/weather conditions? The is reflective, so headlights should light it up pretty well.
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@coderpatsy said in 🙅 THE BAD IDEAS THREAD:
I'm not sure if this is a bad idea or a good idea. It's certainly a bad idea to look at it if you get nightmares easily.
As presented by the internet, a children's book about infinity that's "pure MS Paint Lovecraftian nighmare fuel": https://www.math.brown.edu/~res/farm.pdf
what the fucking fuck did I just read?
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@anotherusername I've never heard of any problems, and it's used pretty much everywhere so it must be good enough.
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@coldandtired said in 🙅 THE BAD IDEAS THREAD:
@Yamikuronue If I saw it here I wouldn't assume it meant 'give way' but 'stop until instructed otherwise'. E.g. for an accident or customs or something.
Okay, to be fair, I can think of two scenarios where it does mean that:
Typically at fixed checkpoints (customs, tollgates, railroad crossings) there won't just be a stop sign; there will also be a red light and/or a mechanical gate.