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Comment by MichaelCollins | Hacker News Reader

We also mark deadly intersections and turns with white crosses, one for each person who's died there. They're worth paying attention to, and I think locals at least learn to be weary of those locations.

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Weary = tired

Wary = cautious about

This long lecture is making me weary.

He was wary of drunk people with an attitude.

I've been told by driving instructors that the rule of thumb for putting up octagon STOP signs here in Denmark is only when a serious accident has occurred.

I can't find a source for it, but they are definitely rarer than most other places, and I feel like they are taken more serious because of it.

Here in the US, I swear the rule of thumb for installing stop signs is only the limitation of how many can be bought under the current budget. So many intersections would be less frustrating by having yield signs, instead.

4-way stops get installed in volume because neighborhoods gentrify and the new residents complain about the traffic being too fast (the old residents had bigger problems to care about) and converting 2-way stops to 4-way stops is a cheap/easy way to slow down traffic, kinda. Then the next week they complain about having to listen to every vehicle accelerate from the stop.

Maybe the driving instructor wanted to impress upon you the importance of respecting the STOP sign with this story? Maybe it's true in some cases, but somehow I can't imagine that at an intersection with very bad visibility the traffic planners just say "let's start with only a Give Way sign and see how many accidents happen, if it's too bad we can always replace it with a STOP sign"?

It's true however that some countries are more prone to what I call "traffic restrictions overshoot" then others - e.g. in Italy there are many stretches of highway limited to 50 km/h, apparently in hopes that drivers will at least reduce their speed to 70-80 km/h, and many STOP signs hoping that drivers will at least slow down at the intersection.

Might be.

But I'd think a Give Way sign should suffice in practice even if the intersection has poor visibility. Only if the intersection proves to cheat drivers in to thinking the visibility is not so bad (and hence drivers won't slow down enough) is a Stop sign needed?

It's the old "if it looks safe but isn't".

I was at a community meeting where they debated removing all such crosses. They were triggering PTSD for people involved in the crashes. Most accidents occur close to home. Imagine a survivor having to drive past such a cross every day. I don't know on which side I land on the issue.

For safety, the crosses should probably be placed far ahead of the dangerous corner, not distracting drivers at the precise point they most need to pay attention.

One would hope that such crosses instead prompt folks to change such intersections so that they will prompt fewer deaths. Maybe then we can have a rule: if we rebuild the road and we see a drop in deaths, then maybe we can remove the sign with crosses. Better yet, replace the intersection with a bus-only, bicycle-only, or rail as public transit, and then that set of crosses is permanently retired.

Sometimes there isn't much you can do. One I grew up near is a T intersection, between three farm fields. The road that butts into the other crests a hill, and the other road is right behind the crest of that hill, about 20-30 meters. There is a T intersection sign on the hill before you reach the top, but some people didn't see it or heed it. If you're following the speed limit with a dry road, it's probably safe even if you ignore the sign. But if you're speeding and miss the sign, you might t-bone somebody on the other road, or crash into the field behind it. I think the people that died there went into the field, but I'm not sure.

Perhaps they could install some sort of blinking warning light on top of the hill and maybe joyriding teenagers would heed that warning, or maybe not. Otherwise I think you'd have to cut through the hill or move the roads completely, either of which there probably isn't much money for.

Replace the T with a roundabout and reduce the speed limit significantly 200 meters before the roundabout.

I think the best/cheapest solution would be some rumble grooves 2-300 meters before the intersection to help alert you to it.

Traffic control devices that "alert" drivers and rely on their choice to slow down are pointless IMO. Better to make it almost impossible to drive at an unsafe speed without ruining your car, removing the choice.

Rounding off the corners of four productive farm fields is not going to be easy/cheap/popular, especially in areas where large farm equipment needs to use the highway too. And a 200m speed zone will not be respected by much of anyone.

> Replace the T with a roundabout

On the side of a hill? That's a ton of earthwork.

Country lanes don't get roundabouts. There's no money for that.

Traffic calming measures is how you tackle things like that. Adding a sharpish S-curve to the roads approaching the T should remove enough speed to make it safer. Won't even need a sign.

A surprise chicane, without even a sign, on a road with a history of speeding cars. What could possibly go wrong?

This also seems to be farm country. Converting productive fields to non-productive traffic calming structures would be about as popular as banning pickup trucks.

It'd not be a surprise chicane. It'd be an obviously visible one. If you're driving in a way where that'd cause accidents you should have your license revoked.

Additional benefit: isolating accidents to only reckless drivers hitting trees rather than t-boning someone else

We can finally throw ‘think of the children’ back at them then.

The counterintuitive thing to do is to make roads "feel" unsafe to make them safe.

A example of this (here done for laugh) is [0], where a single lane muddy curvy hillside road has a speed limit of 80 km/h (50 mph).

The point I would like to make here is that on a street like this is it impossible to joyride and even with low visibility intersections the risk of a T-bone or a fatal crash is minuscule.

This particular example is a strawman of the problem: there are many reasons why most roads cannot be like this, it is just an example of "If the drivers have to pay attention they will pay attention"

[0] https://funsubstance.com/fun/294735/irish-speed-sign/

In the british countryside there are roads barely much better than that with similar speed limits. It's not good, you see people driving some crazy speeds having to brake super hard and then reverse to a passing place when they come up against a tractor.

Speedbumps are inexpensive and last a very long time.

I don't think anybody would be able to differentiate the speedbumps from the condition of all the roads in that area.

In warm climates. Speedbumps are a problem in cold/rural areas that need continuous plowing in winter.

Rural areas don't normally get plowed. Can you imagine the expense of plowing all of USAs rural roads. An alternative is a little swerve that requires slowing down.

Really? You think the highways through the flyover states just pile up with snow all winter? All those mountain passes that connect east and west? They are in fact a higher priority than any urban street. A fleet of double-lane plows speeding down a prairie highway is a sight to see.

https://youtu.be/lkmBP-ISzKk

Please don't use the term "flyover state". It diminishes the lives of millions of people

Or it is an owned term used by people in such areas (me) when people on the coasts lecture us how things are in our own backyard. By using it we hold a mirror to those with such attitudes re rural areas.

as someone who grew up in a rural area with lots of snow, this is false. The roads absolutely get plowed, just at a lower priority than the main highways.

Not to mention that in such areas its fairly common for locals to own their own plow attachments for their trucks (at least that was my experience in rural MN).

There are a few rural roads that don't get plowed. They have big "Enter at your own risk" signs, often in the best of conditions you need 4 wheel drive (all wheel drive will work, but if you don't understand the difference don't attempt it) to get through them at best.

The vast majority of rural roads get plowed. Everyone who lives in a rural area has at least one plowed route from their driveway to the rest of the world.

Sounds like the prudent way of handling your example T-intersection is to rebuild it so it is no longer a T-intersection, or to move it in a way that forces people to slow down (e.g. by turning it 30 degrees, with curves leading into it, or by setting up a roundabout, or by moving it into a position where you see the crossing road more easily).

Curves before intersections are evil for bicycles. They create unanticipated moving blind spots for drivers, blind spots than can hide a bicycle approaching on the cross street.

In all fairness, the situation OP described did not immediately strike the idea of a biking hotspot to me.

If they go to that effort why not, you know, fix the intersection/road? TBH now that I'm driving in the UK there's all sorts of weird inconsistencies while driving/the roads, but their attitude to it seems to be that it's fine.

I'd just love it if roundabout signs posted before the entrance showed: * The lane starting from the left, that you need to be in to get to a certain exit * Number of lanes/exit

Atm it's a bunch of guesswork involving: * Not being able to see the arrows/road names painted on the road because THEY'RE COVERED BY CARS OH HOW DID WE NOT THINK OF THIS * Not being able to see the arrows/road names painted on the road because they're so faded because they haven't been painted in 5-10 years

> If they go to that effort why not, you know, fix the intersection/road?

It's several orders of magnitudes different amounts of effort. Putting up a cross can be done one person in an hour. Fixing a road or intersection is months of work for tens of people,several machines, tonnes of material. Source: I've worked on making several dangerous intersection less dangerous

I guess I worded that badly, I more meant "surely a number of white crosses on an intersection, and the deaths of several people is enough to take action and rework the intersection". It's a failing of a government/council to have several people die at a junction that's clearly dangerous and then decide to do nothing about it.

Economics/value of human lives at play, I guess...

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