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Comment by Bartweiss | Hacker News Reader

Would you accept "humans violate the rules in a safe and principled way, plus lots of other ways"?

I mean, you're obviously correct, human drivers do idiotic and deadly things all the time. But I think we can distinguish that from the behavior in the article.

Gently rolling a stop sign at a high-visibility intersection sounds like a safe and principled violation. Driving around a car waiting to turn left is a bit less safe, but still a principled or predictable violation. The Pittsburgh left is a (fairly) safe and principled violation.

None of those things are comparable to texting and driving, or ignoring a red light. They're informal adjustments to the traffic code that other drivers really do anticipate, and which aren't nearly as dangerous as general "bad driving".

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> Gently rolling a stop sign at a high-visibility intersection sounds like a safe and principled violation.

If you do this yourself, please reconsider. My experience is that drivers who do this (especially at 2-way stops) are watching carefully for perpendicular traffic while blithely ignoring pedestrians approaching the crosswalk that they are rolling through. As a pedestrian, I consider this the second highest threat to my personal life+limb, after left turners who (again) watch for cars and not pedestrians.

Yes! Drivers often seem to only care about the possibility of colliding with another vehicle. So by default they pull right through the crosswalk and/or stop line in order to maximize their visibility of cross traffic and maximize their speed of making the turn without hitting another vehicle. Their actions are both selfish and passive aggressive toward pedestrians, yet at the same time their actions are also completely _rational_ when the driver is ignorant of (or lacks empathy for) pedestrians. They get away with it because it's such a small violation of the law and because pedestrians take on the responsibility of not getting hit.

Yup. If you want to make roads safer for non-drivers, make design choices that make drivers feel more threatened. Turn one-way avenues into two-way streets with street parking, etc.

I see so many entitled, selfish pedestrians downtown, every day it's not even funny. People keep acting like drivers are the only people causing problems, but if pedestrians would quit crossing after the DO NOT WALK, a ton of collisions would be avoided there too. Pedestrians forget to check for, or blatantly ignore cars all the time. I can't count the amount of times I've avoided hitting some pedestrian, because I had to take the responsibility to look out for them.

If cars teach us anything it is that having a massive sense of entitlement is an effective strategy for promoting your own interests. That is why cars are treated with priority in so many places and can delegate responsibility for safety onto other users.

If you introduce the danger then you should take responsibility for safety.

The law puts most of the burden on drivers quite intentionally, and I think properly. My general impression is that the average driver doesn't understand the law and don't appreciate the extent to which it is designed to favor pedestrians.

To give one example, drivers are required to yield to pedestrians in cross walks and to pedestrians approaching crosswalks while pedestrians are only required to "exercise due care," which is a much weaker requirement. If you want to see how weak this requirement really is, look at the case law. In many cases in which the average driver thinks the pedestrian is in the wrong, the law disagrees and would place the lion's share of blame on the driver.

> To give one example, drivers are required to yield to pedestrians in cross walks and to pedestrians approaching crosswalks

Is that actually the case? I know that the former is true, but I haven't come across a law stating that drivers are required to yield to pedestrians who are not already in a crosswalk. Does case law differ from the text of the law it refers to?

> while pedestrians are only required to "exercise due care," which is a much weaker requirement. If you want to see how weak this requirement really is, look at the case law. In many cases in which the average driver thinks the pedestrian is in the wrong, the law disagrees and would place the lion's share of blame on the driver.

I would be curious about what case law would say about a collision like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=io_XBK0twtQ. Specifically, who would be found at fault/liable.

Nobody's acting like drivers are the only people causing problems. However, drivers seem unique in their ability to feel that they're doing everyone else a favor by allowing them to cross THEIR roadways.

Heavier, faster-moving vehicles are typically expected to yield to slower ones, whether on the roads or on the local multi-use path, because they're the ones likely to cause the most damage when a collision occurs.

Fair enough.

I did this when I lived in a rural setting and there were no sidewalks or crosswalks. In that case, I'm talking about rolling stop signs at entirely-empty intersections, where you can see that there are no cars or people around. At that point, I'm not sure I feel so bad about it - seeing a person at all is an adequate cue to drive differently.

I don't anymore, though, because I live in a city. Noticing everyone and working out their intentions means actually stopping.

Which, I suppose, is the sort of difference we might get between a self-driving car and a responsible human driver; the car isn't likely to treat stop signs contextually.

The presence of a stop sign is usually the result of a determination based on either engineering principles or (often fatal) experience that the intersection does not provide adequate conditions to be safely rolled, whereas if no such determination were made, either an uncontrolled intersection or Yield would be present instead.

It's true that a self-driving car will likely not be designed to substitute it's judgement for those of the authorities placing signage, though I'm not convinced that this is a bad thing for safety, or that the predilection of some human drivers to disregard such signage is a good, or even harmless, thing.

> The presence of a stop sign is usually the result of a determination based on either engineering principles or (often fatal) experience that the intersection does not provide adequate conditions to be safely rolled

A lot of times, they will be placed as a form of speed control. The MUTCD has requirements regarding the use of stop signs, but they don't appear to be followed most of the time. Otherwise, we wouldn't have nearly as many stop signs at intersections where there is plenty of visibility of cross traffic.

Of the two parts pertaining to complying with a stop sign (first stop, then yield), the second is far more important than the first when it comes to avoiding a collision. You can certainly come to a full stop and subsequently fail to yield and then collide with a pedestrian or vehicle. But even if you don't come to a full stop and do yield to a pedestrian or vehicle that has the right-of-way, you're not going to collide with them.

> A lot of times, they will be placed as a form of speed control.

An interesting thought: what's the lowest speed limit sign you've ever seen?

I've seen 5 MPH in parking lots, but never on an actual road. For official road signs, I virtually never see anything below 15 MPH. I'd be pretty surprised if this was actually the ideal driving outcome. There has to be some intersection at which 5 MPH and a yield sign is the ideal arrangement.

But given how traffic laws are enforced, and how people tend to ignore low speed limits, it's not a very practical arrangement. Instead, stop signs go in everywhere that very low speed limits are required.

(I'm still vaguely wondering whether a lot of people in this thread have ever driven somewhere very rural. Gently rolling a stop sign at an intersection with a mile of visibility and no one else around is not some wild risk.)

Also consider how many roads there are where nobody obeys the speed limit but they all more or less adhere to the same speed.

Speed limits are designed and enforced poorly.. For the most part; outliers create more danger than many cars going the same speed.

The CBC had some nice coverage of this.

You're essentially getting at the point of the article. Driving laws reflect neither actual behavior nor what we'd consider ideal behavior.

Great point. I wasn't thinking how that news piece related. Great point.

No, that still goes to far. I'd accept "humans violate the rules in ways which are very occasionally, inadvertently safe."

Oh, come on. Coming to a rolling stop at an empty, clearly visible intersection is not some sort of insane suicidal behavior.

I'm not saying it is. A rolling stop at a busy intersection where you barely miss other cars and/or pedestrians is insane behavior, though, and that's what I'm talking about.

Yes, there are people who carefully evaluate the situation and only roll their stops when it's safe. They make up a minuscule percentage of the population, though. Most people just do it out of laziness or selfishness, and when they do it safely, it's a happy accident, not a deliberate policy.

I disagree.

> Coming to a rolling stop at an empty, clearly visible intersection is not some sort of insane suicidal behavior.

The problem is that humans easily misjudge what they believe to be an empty, clearly visible intersection.

If you're the first person to the line you have the right of way anyway.

As my driving instructor used to say, "Stop signs and red lights do not actually reach out and stop the other driver."

The lesson: just because it's your turn to go does not mean that others will not enter the intersection when it's not their turn. I agree that rolling stops at a 4-way stop are generally safe when you can clearly see that no other cars are at or approaching the intersection. But in my experience, the fact that the other person is at fault has been little consolation for having to deal with a totaled car and a permanent backache.

The laws of physics always trump the laws of the road.

OK, obviously that's true. But if it's empty, you have good visibility, and you plainly have the right of way, well, I'm just going to take it on faith that nobody is hurtling down the road at 80 mph. You can't possibly account for everything; that's the risk of driving.

Or you could, stop, check the intersection and proceed safely like you are legally required to do.

And that would foreclose the possibility of someone racing down the perpendicular street and ignoring the stop sign?

No, but it would increase the chance of you noticing that person and taking corrective action.

Right, so the reward/risk isn't enough for you. It's also prudent to stop at a green and look both ways but nobody does this either.

At the end of the day you either trust other drivers or you don't. You're not exposing yourself to any significant addional risk by making these 'safe violations' than you do driving in general.

The whole idea behind "defensive driving" is that you don't trust the other driver.

But in some sense you do, because you don't come to a dead stop at every intersection, even when it's green. And it's a bitter pill to swallow, but no amount of defensive driving can make you totally safe. Getting rear-ended sucks.

Sure, but you can take some relatively easy actions to significantly reduce your chance of injury by a crazy driver. I don't come to a stop at green lights, but I do glance both ways to see if there's oncoming traffic. Occasionally there is: I've seen people blatantly run red lights.

Here lies the body of Johnny Leday

Who died defending his right-of-way.

He was right--dead-right--as he sailed along

But he's just as dead, as if he'd been wrong.

In lots of places, pedestrians still have the right of way over you. Please don't ignore that they exist.

OK, sure, but unless you have some extremely fast pedestrians where you live I don't see the relevance to the discussion of whether it's reasonable to do a rolling stop.

Like I feel like I'm talking to people on other planets right now. It's like you've never seen anyone do a rolling stop before. This isn't someone careening through an intersection at full speed. This is someone too lazy to actually bring their car to a complete, thud, stop and gently roll into the intersection at like 5 miles an hour. You're not risking pedestrian lives, you're risking a slightly more abrupt brake if there happens to be unexpected pedestrian or cross traffic.

I never do rolling stops. I've been in situations at night where, if I had done a rolling stop, I would have gently hit someone on a skateboard or bicycle. Some people completely ignore vehicles at crossings. It almost feels like they're trying to get hit by a car.

Actually 5mph is quite fast. When I do a rolling stop in my car, it's typically on the order of perhaps 2mph, which is a speed where I can proceed in 1st gear without coming to a complete stop and then having to start again from a stop.

I just ran the math, the kinetic energy of a 2000kg car at 5mph is the equivalent of the kinetic energy of a 100kg bicycle+cyclist at 22mph.

I absolutely roll stops, but it's important to recognize what we might miss. My old commute had a series of 5 (virtually useless) stop signs in a row, an arterial with very little cross traffic but tons of 4-way stops. (should have been roundabouts). The routine of the drive, and the necessity to stop, the focus on the stop signs and stop lines, and the almost total lack of pedestrians meant that I'd occasionally start off before noticing the cross traffic or pedestrian. (yes, this is more of a boy-who-cried wolf kind of thing). Also, modern cars are amazingly difficult to see out of-- pedestrians can be hidden behind thick airbag-containing A pillars. When you're moving, however slowly, everything in your field of view is also moving. When you stop, it's much easier to spot objects that are NOT stopped.

Hell, just last week I was making a left turn on my bicycle. As I approached the intersection, I slowed, looked each way up the road several times as my sightlines improved, and just at the moment I committed to my turn and began to proceed, I saw the minivan coming from my left that was on a collision course with me; I locked up my brakes and stopped just in time. I know I looked exactly where the van was coming from, multiple times, but somehow missed it. I suspect, again, our brains are much better at seeing what's in motion when we are ourselves stopped.

The kinetic energy of he car doesn't matter -- you could put the mass of a planet behind the car, the pedestrian will still get hit the same way.

Drivers have vastly different reflexes and visual acuity.

I have been running for 25+ years and have on occasion been traveling at close to 10 mph and usually at least 8 mph. So California rolls are pretty much the bane of my existence.

This is primarily because the "roller" may be planning to take a right turn and are looking straight and glancing left and don't even look my way traveling from their right.

I do take responsibility for my own survival so I wear lights, and try my best to make eye contact before entering intersections etc. but I have had many close calls where they did not even see me due to their own target fixation.

Now that I am on a bike more often I feel even more insecure because my speed is so much higher.

I'm sure that every rolling stop you do you're utterly alert to potential obstacles from every direction, but I see plenty of "rolling stops" come far too close to doing damage for comfort, and it's usually damage to a road user who has the right of way.

I mean the main situation where I'd do one is a four way intersection that nobody else is at.

I guess I appreciate your caution, but you're evidently not at all representative of most drivers.

>If you're the first person to the line you have the right of way anyway.

If there are any pedestrians around then you don't.

It's a matter of perspective.

It looks a lot more insane when you're paid well enough to outsource those behaviors (and liability) to whoever's driving your Uber.

It's like when a company makes a statement about supporting a living wage and contracts out its janitorial services who pay anything but.

I don't understand what you're driving at.

It's easy to bitch about people not following the letter of the law when you're not spending 45min in a rush hour commute every day and the benefit of not following the letter of the law is not tangible to you.

Oh, I see. Yeah, I don't miss driving to work.

On the contrary, I'm a lot more uptight about it when I drive frequently, because I eventually get tired of people nearly killing me or breaking my stuff because they can't be bothered to put the least bit of effort into their driving.

You notice the big violations.

You do not even notice the small ones, which happen all the time. How many people cross solid lines? How many people sometimes drift a bit out of their lane? How many people scrupulously follow the speed limit like a computer does, not even accidentally drifting above it? How many people simply screw up the order of operations at a busy stop sign? How many people always scrupulously use their turn signals in accordance with the local laws? (You may use them frequently, even scrupulously, but I bet you often turn them on what is legally too late.) I've been driving through a construction zone all summer. People definitely don't drive "45 when workers are around". They don't slow down when the workers are behind the concrete barriers and a dozen feet from the road, and may drive 25 when they're sitting right next to the road with just a barrel a bit between you and them.

Even a cop tailing you and desperately hunting for reasons to pull you over still probably lets through plenty of violations. There's too many laws for the cop to keep in their head.

Crossing solid lines is not illegal in my state. Drifting a bit out of your lane is pretty dangerous. Usually you get away with it, but if two people do it at the same time while adjacent, you're going to bump. Do it when there's oncoming traffic in the next lane (which I see all the damned time) then you could easily get people killed. Mildly exceeding the speed limit is fine, but people don't do it in a carefully considered way because they know it's still safe, they do it because they're in a hurry and know they probably won't get pulled over.

Crossing solid lines (or crossing a gore, at least) is illegal in my state.

Meanwhile, a lot of highway on-ramps are painted with single-lane-width, high-angle merges that are dangerous to adhere to - they leave you making a ~30 degree turn while accelerating into traffic. As a result, everyone starts their merge early in the gore area, matches speed, and merges at a gentle angle.

(The road designers presumably know this, and keep the marked path narrow regardless so that drivers won't attempt to form multiple lanes.)

This is a pretty great example of what I'm describing - I don't think people make great decisions about violating driving rules, but I also don't think it's fair to call safe decisions "inadvertent". Not breaking that law is genuinely dangerous, and people violate it specifically to be safer.

I think you're attributing way too much thought and care to the average driver. I see people merge early like you describe all over the place where it's completely unnecessary. It's probably not a conscious choice for safety over obeying the rules, it's just random idiocy that happens to work better in this case.

It's called a Pittsburgh Left?! When I first came to the US to Boston it drove me crazy, to me it was the epitome of uncivilized American driving "how dare you cut in front of me without my permission!" But it makes sense at the right kind of intersection, and of course I adopted it because otherwise I'd be the odd one holding up the traffic making people frustrated.

>how dare you cut in front of me without my permission

Allow me to fill in between the lines:

"What is this, some sort of (mostly still) free country where people are not given harsh punishments for all behavior that prioritizes the individual over the group?"

(sarcasm implied)

People are harshly punished for the Pittsburgh Left, it's just that the punishment is somewhat random and handed out by physics rather than lawmen.

Wikipedia doesn't present it as quite so selfish:

"By accepting a modest delay in going straight, the opposing traffic has saved the left-turning traffic waiting an entire light cycle to turn left, as well as saved an equivalent amount of time for all the cars that otherwise would have been stuck behind the left-turning car. In situations where there is so much oncoming, straight traffic that a left turn would not be otherwise possible during any part of the light cycle, the Pittsburgh left can allow a line of left turning traffic to proceed incrementally."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittsburgh_left

It's not the safest bit of driving, but it's enormously pro-social. As that quote suggests, the problem isn't "I want to turn left" but rather "there are 30 cars behind me going straight, with no room to pass me on the right".

If people just wanted to turn left, this would happen everywhere. Instead, I see it almost exclusively in cities with narrow streets lacking left turn lanes. In extreme cases, it's even personally beneficial for the yielding driver - the alternative is sometimes gridlock that circles back around to them.

None of which makes it safe, but it's pretty obviously common for reasons other than selfishness.

>I want to turn left but rather "there are 30 cars behind me going straight, with no room to pass me on the right.

Thank you. I'm going to use this reasoning next time someone complains.

I had no idea that 1. this had a name and 2. it was illegal. I've done that Left so many times back when I lived in Pennsylvania, I figured it was totally acceptable. I've been in situations stuck behind a left-turner for 5+ light cycles because he couldn't/wouldn't turn left due to unrelenting oncoming traffic. What's the legal solution? You can't wait forever!

(We don't seem to have this problem out here in California, where every street has at least four lanes!)

As far as I know, the only legal solution is that one car gets to enter the intersection and then turn left after the signal has gone red. Of course, that's often a terrible answer - clearing one car per light cycle is a route to spectacular gridlock. (And with Boston drivers consistently running newly-red lights or blocking intersections, you sometimes don't even clear one car per cycle.)

Wikipedia does hint at a legal kludge, though - "I judged oncoming traffic to be moving so slowly that I could safely turn". The idea I guess being that it's not a change to driving rules, it's just slow acceleration and a legal turn.

I can't imagine that would hold up real well legally, especially if people are flashing headlights and making an invitation. On the other hand, I've never heard of this leading to a ticket in Boston - it just can't compete with the other violations that happen constantly!

The Pittsburgh/Boston left is extremely dangerous if you're not prepared for it to happen. I can't find a citation at the moment, but I believe in Ontario it constitutes stunt driving, and carries fines comparable to street racing.

A bit more info here:

http://www.wheels.ca/news/auto-know-jumping-light-for-a-left...

Although I'm in favour of the law in general, I really dislike the 'stunt driving' name. I'm not sure that many (or any) of the offences covered under the law really qualify as stunts. Dumb and dangerous, yes, but not stunts.

Call this law something else, and save 'stunt drving' for people who drive their cars on two wheels and other related craziness. :)

Despite living in the Boston area I don't really do this, even though I see others doing it, because, well, I don't really trust the other guy to stop.

Are you sure you live in Boston? Usually, the goal seems to be to dare the other driver, sometimes coupled with taunting.

Yes, people do drive differently in different regions. Boston is the only place where I have had two cars totaled. It was parked both times. The second time the driver of the other car seemingly backed up and smashed into it again.

I love that dirty water.

I live in the South Shore but I'm not sure if that's better or worse.

I have done some traffic modeling in your area, and lived in the area. Boston has some aggressive drivers but that's probably due to the infrastructure being based on things like cow paths.

> Gently rolling a stop sign at a high-visibility intersection

I've always heard this called a "California stop." Are you in California? Looking for a point of data.

There are many variations. It depends on your region, more or less.

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2015/10/was-california...

Google will find more results.

In California, it's frequently called a "California Roll", which makes it a pun for the sushi.

Maybe it should be called a "anywhere in the United States stop."

Eh? I'm not in CA, and like the other answers I see this everywhere in the country. I suppose it's rarer in places where intersections are almost never quiet and empty, but I've seen it all over New York (not NYC), Ohio, Wisconsin, and a half-dozen other states. It's standard practice anywhere rural, and in a lot of suburbs.

Driving to the right of a car turning left isn’t even illegal in all cases.

Why would it ever be?

I think it's only contextually illegal - on narrow streets, you might have to enter a bike lane, drive in a parking zone, or otherwise break a rule to have room to pass.

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