Unnecessary sign



  • @Random832 said:

    See, this is why in the US they turn off all the lights for all failure modes - that way people know what to do and it doesn't matter why it's not working.

    Sadly, this is not true.  First, it varies regionally.  I've also seen US failure modes of 'all lights blinking red' (electronic stop sign), 'main street gets blinking yellow (yield sign), everyone else gets blinking red', and, most fun of all, 'some lights off, and others blinking in one of the prior patterns'.  Of course, these should all be fairly easy to understand.

    But worse, I've seen people encounter these intersections and have no clue what to do.  One time, I arrived at an intersection with five cars waiting behind an intersection with no lights lit (this was 'everyone gets blinking red' territory, but there was a power outage - as evidenced by the fact that all the street lights and retail lights were also off, despite it being midnight, although the two establishments with backup generators had their "we have emergency power so don't think our alarms are off" lights on.  The intersection in question is three lanes in both directions, plus a turn left only lane for the main road, two lanes in each direction into a parking lot, and one lane in each direction into a residential block.

    I sat there for about four minutes before I got impatient enough to blow my horn, meanwhile, four additional cars pulled up behind me.  Blowing my horn did nothing.  At five minutes, I pulled into the left turn lane (fortunately for me, I had been in the left-most straight lane), pulled up to the line, looked carefully around the intersection, and then carefully made an illegal straight from a left-turn only lane.  All of the cars behind me continued to wait, as I drove to the next light, stopped, carefully looked all directions, and proceeded on, not seeing any oncoming cars.  As the road turned slightly, I looked back, and saw that nobody had moved.

    I don't know how long they had waited, but when I headed out to work the next day, they weren't still there.  However, as the power was back on, it's impossible for me to determine if anybody had realized that a traffic light which is off in all directions is effectively a stop sign before the power came back on.

    Edit: just thought I'd mention, this was not the only time I ran into an issue like this at that intersection.  I encountered it about 4-5 times during power outages around midnight, as I tended to work late hours while I lived in that neighborhood.

    However, all of the other times, I encountered it with at least one lane open.  If I was not the first person there, and the other people there did not realize it was an all-way stop before I proceeded through the intersection, they at least followed my lead (after waiting a reasonable amount of time for a police car to materialize and pull me over, of course.)



  • @tgape said:

    @Random832 said:
    See, this is why in the US they turn off all the lights for all failure modes - that way people know what to do and it doesn't matter why it's not working.

    Sadly, this is not true.  First, it varies regionally.  I've also seen US failure modes of 'all lights blinking red' (electronic stop sign), 'main street gets blinking yellow (yield sign), everyone else gets blinking red', and, most fun of all, 'some lights off, and others blinking in one of the prior patterns'.  Of course, these should all be fairly easy to understand.

    But worse, I've seen people encounter these intersections and have no clue what to do.  One time, I arrived at an intersection with five cars waiting behind an intersection with no lights lit (this was 'everyone gets blinking red' territory, but there was a power outage - as evidenced by the fact that all the street lights and retail lights were also off, despite it being midnight, although the two establishments with backup generators had their "we have emergency power so don't think our alarms are off" lights on.  The intersection in question is three lanes in both directions, plus a turn left only lane for the main road, two lanes in each direction into a parking lot, and one lane in each direction into a residential block.

    I sat there for about four minutes before I got impatient enough to blow my horn, meanwhile, four additional cars pulled up behind me.  Blowing my horn did nothing.  At five minutes, I pulled into the left turn lane (fortunately for me, I had been in the left-most straight lane), pulled up to the line, looked carefully around the intersection, and then carefully made an illegal straight from a left-turn only lane.  All of the cars behind me continued to wait, as I drove to the next light, stopped, carefully looked all directions, and proceeded on, not seeing any oncoming cars.  As the road turned slightly, I looked back, and saw that nobody had moved.

    I don't know how long they had waited, but when I headed out to work the next day, they weren't still there.  However, as the power was back on, it's impossible for me to determine if anybody had realized that a traffic light which is off in all directions is effectively a stop sign before the power came back on.

    Edit: just thought I'd mention, this was not the only time I ran into an issue like this at that intersection.  I encountered it about 4-5 times during power outages around midnight, as I tended to work late hours while I lived in that neighborhood.

    However, all of the other times, I encountered it with at least one lane open.  If I was not the first person there, and the other people there did not realize it was an all-way stop before I proceeded through the intersection, they at least followed my lead (after waiting a reasonable amount of time for a police car to materialize and pull me over, of course.)

    Sadly, I've seen the opposite as well, where the lights all go out and an idiot or two on the main road just blows through the intersection doing 45 because there's no red light.  I'm always cautious around broken lights so I'm not too worried about getting splattered myself, but seeing people create such a public safety hazard through sheer stupidity makes me fantasize about being an on-duty cop with a tazer.



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    Sadly, I've seen the opposite as well, where the lights all go out and an idiot or two on the main road just blows through the intersection doing 45 because there's no red light.

    Sadly, I've personally witnessed a major accident from someone doing significantly more than 45 and blew straight into the intersection (he attempted to fly through the intersection, but his Ford F150 didn't have a JATO rocket, so its flight capabilities were limited).  He was not able to continue *straight* through, although I seem to recall most of the wreckage ended up on the cross street.  On the bright side, the driver at fault never committed any more driving violations.  Note: I was about 5-6 cars back, so I didn't see it very well.

    It happened at a particularly nasty intersection; I'm glad that I live far from there now.



  • I do agree that most rules in various countries do tend to make sense within the country - but usually one way is not better than another way when comparing between countries/states/etc: everything has advantages and disadvantages. I am interested in the differences :) and have researched a lot of technical differences between countries, but not so much road rules. It was only recently that the rules in all of Australia was brought in line: the 6 different state had different rules for lots of things.

    @Random832 said:

    I looked it up and you're wrong. A give way sign does indeed mean you give way to traffic coming from all directions - no signs at all on an intersection means you give way to the right only.

    Where am I wrong? Look at rule 69A - I'm car 2 in the left picture! The car at the give-way sign gives way to me.

    I omitted some details otherwise I'd ramble for hours.

    @Random832 said:

    I was amused at page 20 (21 of the PDF) - here in the US, crossing the equivalent painted area is illegal, so no-one would bother writing specific give way rules for it (since anyone who's breaking a traffic law is at fault in a crash, that's all that needs to be said)

     Yeah it's legal to cross a dashed or single-line painted traffic island. It is not legal to enter an island over a double line though.



  • @Zemm said:

    I do agree that most rules in various countries do tend to make sense within the country - but usually one way is not better than another way when comparing between countries/states/etc: everything has advantages and disadvantages. I am interested in the differences :) and have researched a lot of technical differences between countries, but not so much road rules. It was only recently that the rules in all of Australia was brought in line: the 6 different state had different rules for lots of things.

    @Random832 said:

    I looked it up and you're wrong. A give way sign does indeed mean you give way to traffic coming from all directions - no signs at all on an intersection means you give way to the right only.

    Where am I wrong? Look at rule 69A - I'm car 2 in the left picture! The car at the give-way sign gives way to me.

    You said, essentially, that cars do NOT have to give way to traffic coming from the LEFT when at a give way sign. This doesn't come up in 69A, but it comes up in a lot of the other examples. Also, they don't need a sign to have to give way to a car coming from the right; you implied they do and that cars that don't have a sign don't have to give way at all. The "give way to the right" rule only applies if the signs do not give sufficient information otherwise.



  • @Daid said:

    @Spectre said:
    @Daid said:
    Unless ofcourse, it starts to blink yellow, then it's broken, and you should be careful.

    Ah, but what if the yellow light is broken? Clearly seeing green is the only way to be sure that running somebody over won't be your fault.

    If it's in a 'fault' state because of a broken red light then all yellow lights will blink, chances of all yellows being broken is very slim.
     

     Here in the UK, a flashing Amber means "Proceed if clear". Used on pedestrian crossings, if no one's crossing, you can proceed on amber.

     If the lights fail, traffic flows a LOT more smoothly, especially at larger junctions. If the lights get stuck on red, you can still get a ticket for going through the red light. No lights = Proceed with caution.


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