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Comment by emodendroket | Hacker News Reader

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

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> 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.

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.

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.

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