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Comment by BrandonY | Hacker News Reader

I drive defensively and lived in Boston. I couldn't deal with the mindset of Boston drivers. I moved to Seattle. I am so much happier here. Sometimes drivers cause traffic jams because they spend too much time waving at each other to go out of turn: "You go!" "No, you go!" "No, I insist, you definitely stopped before me!" These are my people.

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Ugh. I am not an aggressive driver by any means, but I hate passive drivers. Near my house there is a grocery store with a three way intersection. Entering traffic has right of way to turn left or right without stopping (there literally is no stop sign). Traffic going straight through has to stop.

All the time I'm sitting there at a stop when someone pulls up and stops with no stop sign, then honks and waves at me to go on. No. I have a stop sign. You don't. I am not going. The last thing I need is to get half way through the intersection and you plow into me and claim I ran a stop sign.

No. Follow the damn law. If you stop first, you go first. If I have a stop sign and you don't, you go. If we stop at the same time, the person on the right goes first. It's the fucking law. If you can't figure it out, go back to driving school. Don't wave me on, because the cop and the insurance company don't take much stock in "waves". They expect people to follow the damn law.

It's not defensive driving. It's dangerous.

I seriously need to move from Seattle to Boston. I can't stand the drivers here who completely vapor-lock at 4-ways until someone waves them through...

Of course I don't really like 4 ways in SF where you have to fight tooth and nail for your right of way, but some happy medium where everyone just efficiently goes when its their turn would be nice...

I just moved to Seattle proper and stopped driving altogether. Too stressful, no matter where you live.

This is why I hate driving in those types of areas.

A good percentage of the time two people end up trying to enter the intersection at once because hand signals are not a clear communication method for signaling right of way.

For some reason 50% or so of drivers have no idea how a 4 way stop works. That drives me nuts that cars are totally unpredictable at 4 way stops. These people get to a 4 way stop and frantically wave everyone else through I presume because they don't know who has the right of way. Or they don't wait their turn and go at some random time. You never know what is gonna happen.

> That drives me nuts that cars are totally unpredictable at 4 way stops. These people get to a 4 way stop and frantically wave everyone else through I presume because they don't know who has the right of way.

There's all kinds of legitimate reasons you might be uncertain about who actually has right of way (and, even more so, have doubts about whether other drivers perceive the situation the same way, and agree with your perception of who has right of way.)

"When in Doubt, Bail Out" is actually the NHTSA gives to this situation, and emphasizes that it trumps all other intersection right-of-way rules. [0]

[0] http://www.nhtsa.gov/DOT/NHTSA/NTI/Article/RightOfWay/RightO...

However it happens so often in very, very, very, very straightforward situations I can only concluded these people have no idea whatsoever how stop signs work. We aren't talking in any case with any ambiguity whatsoever. It makes stop signs so unpredictable that they become dangerous.

Could this have something to do with what seems to be a very simple driving test to obtain a license in the US? Here in Germany you are required to attend a lot of theoretical and practical driving lessons and expected to know traffic priorities / right of way by heart. The hierarchy of traffic lights > signs > whoever comes from your right is really a no-brainer here.

and you're the reason I spent too much time on the Mass Pike ;)

There's no such thing as merge, there is only shove!

Edit: No blame devolves to you. As I said, it's a cultural thing.

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