Hacker News Reader

Comment by jdalgetty | Hacker News Reader

I live in a subdivision full of young families with kids. I'm also a runner, an avid dog walker and someone who walks his kids to and from school every day. As someone out on foot on a daily basis I am constantly blown away by the amount of people speeding on residential streets and not stopping at stop signs. I don't get it! These are clearly people who live in these neighbourhoods yet they don't care enough about their own community to drive safely or responsibly.

If people aren't willing to at least drive carefully in their own neighbourhoods, imagine how they drive when they don't have to worry about running over their neighbours kids.

View on HN

Stop signs basically dont work anywhere. If you want people to drive slowly, you have to build streets that make them do so.

If anyone is interested in this stuff, the youtube channel NotJustBikes talks a lot about this and related topics. Here's a short video on how "traffic calming" infrastructure gets drivers to slow down, and we all know that stop signs just dont.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/tGOBOw9s-QM

Stop sign + a tiny roundabout is the cheapest way to this, e.g https://www.google.fr/maps/@37.4461846,-122.1654555,3a,75y,3...

Someone probably died here for this roundabout to be added though.

This is not the best design, you can still go full speed through it. Much better ones actually force you to slow down, ie sub 30kmh otherwise your suspension, tires etc will get hammered a bit (or more). There are numerous ways how to do it, ie central island is wide, island's walls are high and steep, you can have speed bumps before it etc. Its has been done elsewhere and it works.

Already done.

A car leaps 7 meters into the air across the roundabout.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aniguxnz9ik

Important to mention that driver was drunk out of his mind (2.8‰ BAC)

So it worked, weeded out dangerous driver before it can kill bunch of kids crossing the road on pedestrian crossing. Generally it really works, I mean 100% of the cases where I live. Everybody slows down, normal cars, sports cars, motobikes etc. If you don't, you suffer for your own ignorance.

Indeed, with even a halfway decent sports car, a roundabout isn't a traffic calming measure, it's a little bit of excitement. If you want to slow traffic down, put in an Indian style speed bump. Though in the US you'd probably have vandals taking it a jackhammer to it the next day.

The European solution is the right-before-left rule which means you always have to yield to cars coming from your right.

In residential areas you never would have any signs because of this rule.

You can speed through it if visibility is good but it is very hard to argue you weren't at fault in case of a crash.

There's no single European solution. Only some countries have the right-before-left rule.

Britain can shrink the roundabout to just paint, or sometimes paint and a slight hump: https://www.google.com/maps/@51.4722603,-0.0655446,3a,75y,32...

Denmark prefers tight corners and narrower roads. Just one parked car and you have to slow: https://www.google.com/maps/@55.6754101,12.4699621,3a,75y,28...

speed bumps and lower speeds are the best way in residential areas. You can run a stop sign, you can't run a speedbump.

> we all know that stop signs just dont

Are there some numbers on this? Even if your own?

I mean, _some_ people don't stop, sure that's valid on its face.

But they "just don't work anywhere", is that what, half of drivers refusing to stop at a four way stop? One in four?

I get that it's a fraught topic, but still...

It's not as comprehensive as you're probably looking for, but I saw a video a while back with some observations on this in Ottawa: https://youtu.be/HT_KdFCVEdc

It is true from my experience that yield signs are used extensively in some parts of Europe. Are stop signs really that common in NA?

> Are stop signs really that common in NA?

More common than yield signs, by far. Which is probably why most people treat them as yield signs.

If you were to bike around my city, you will notice that between zero and one percent of vehicles will come to a full stop at any stop signs or while doing right turns on red lights. For pedestrian safety, I think rolling right on red lights is worse because the cars will often only be looking left, and never check to their right for someone in the crosswalk or a cyclist approaching on their right.

The psychology of this seems easy to explain, too. Stop signs get folks into a routine of basically, "stop, see nothing is there to stop for, start moving." Do that enough times, and you accidentally move on to "start moving" from habit alone. Contrast that with things that have you slow down, where you will slow down every time from the same learned habit. Even if you accidentally move on and potentially hit something, you will have at least slowed considerably beforehand.

(Yes, you should also be coming to a full stop, but it is impressive how rapidly people will go through the motions of "stop, look, go" to the point that they don't realize they didn't finish any one step. Similar to talking, all told. In speech, most words blend together and you don't have meaningful stops between all words.)

Also looks like the perceived risk is too low. In other countries, ignoring a stop sign (or red traffic light) can cost you your drivers licence fairly quickly, if the police notices it. So there are lots of cameras that 24/7 get the reckless drivers. And driving without readable plates is also not a small thing that gets handwaived.

But the rules only help you so far, you need the execution (iE: police on the streets that actually performs their duties). Might not be as glorious as stopping a shooter, but ensuring smooth traffic literally also saves lives.

As someone who lives in a pre-car suburb, I don't feel that at all.

Road design goes a long way towards that, and roads that _feel_ safe counter-intuitively make drivers behave in less safe ways, while most drivers (broad generalization) will behave more cautiously when the roads they drive feel unsafe. The fact that your subdivision is statistically likely top have wide roads with plenty of visibility, few (if any) cars parked on the street, and big setbacks means drivers feel more comfortable with going 30+ MPH in a residential zone. On the other hand, my narrow street with cars parked on both sides and only about two feet of clearance on each side tends to make most drivers only go 20-25 MPH (although there's still daredevil scofflaws).

Edit: and the city is improving it -- my street is scheduled to get curb extensions, which should both make it slightly safer for drivers (visibility into intersections will be improved) and for pedestrians (the road will be further narrowed at intersections).

Gold star for using the term scofflaws.

Residential speeders are bunch of no-account ruffians if you ask me.

I think the rise of delivery of all sorts of things (food, goods) has people who don't live in our neighborhoods doing a lot of this fast, stop-sign-running behavior. When I walk near dinner time I notice a lot more of the behavior.

Delivery can be especially bad because the drivers have a direct incentive to dash from customer to customer. Maximizing their revenue takes precedence ūber (over) driving safely. This is nothing new. Dominos had to cancel their 30 min or its free guarantee because drivers were running red lights.

Also a runner here - over the years I've lived in a handful of towns, and the wealthier the town, the more likely people are to just totally blow stop signs without checking. (And they get mad if they almost hit you)

> And they get mad if they almost hit you

I don't read much into that. It's extremely common for people to become angry when startled, especially in a near-collision situation.

I'll just say, it's hard for me not to read something into it.

The wealthiest town I lived in (in college), a group of classmates and I almost got run down by a minivan, while we were crossing during a red light and walk signal. The driver rolled down the window to yell at us that we were in the wrong, "Because we didn't pay taxes in this town". Is that normal/common? Because that sort of experience was normal for that town - I knew a few people who actually had been hit while walking with a similar experience, being yelled at by the driver while they are lying on the ground.

As a cyclist in France and Belgium, I'd say it's again the extremes.

Wealthy and poor neighborhoods are the dangerous ones where drivers are absolute dangers. And to me the reason is simple : there's not much law enforcement there. The rich ones because they are friends with the mayor/police chief so they have orders to not bother the locals. The poor ones because not sending police there is the easiest way to keep the bad guys there. At least they are not doing their stuff elsewhere.

Many people told me so and I didn't wanted to believe them because it was too simple. But bad experience after bad experience made me come to the same conclusion : where there's no law enforcement, more and more people are breaking the law, no matter the consequences for their peers.

same re: runner+kids. It's insane. I watch people blatantly blow through red lights on a daily basis. Someone once grabbed my mother-in-law and pulled her back because she walked when the signal said walk and she would have been hit.

Until now I didn't really have any data, just my eyes, and my brain, and I knew things weren't trending well.

Sad.

Same. I live within a mile of an elementary school and giant park that I was excited to allow my kids to roam to and to run to myself. There's 300m of 35mph road and a network of 25mph residential streets. The latter feel pretty safe, the 35mph section, though, sees people going 55mph while staring at their phones on a regular basis.

I bike to and from work most days, decked out in fluorescent colors and reflectors and blinky lights that should make a negligent vehicular homicide civil suit a slam-dunk for my wife, plus an excellent set of life insurance policies if that doesn't work.

To my shame, I have a large old SUV that I use on days I can't bike, but it brings me a perverse joy to drive at or just under the actual speed limit on my road and watch the traffic pile up behind me.

this is the way. don't feel bad. whoever is angry about you can't really complain about it. If you are often late by car, the solution is to start a few mins earlier, not reckless speeding.

Besides slowing the vehicles behind you down to a safe and legal speed, a secondary advantage of obeying the speed limit on neighborhood streets is to influence routing algorithms.

Many routing algorithms base their decisions on past travel time and current traffic conditions. If you convince enough of your neighbors to drive legally then eventually the routing algorithms increase their anticipated travel time for those streets which (depending on what the alternatives are) may result in fewer people being routed onto those streets.

There's also a social media element. There are many accounts who post close calls along with questions like "who was in the wrong?"

The answers you see are sometimes jaw-dropping[1] and I suspect there's an element of "the blind leading the blind" as people assume some of this is correct.

[1] For example someone posted a close call where a truck turning left nearly hit a pedestrian crossing in the crosswalk and the top comments claimed that it was the pedestrian's fault because the red hand was flashing and she should not be in the crosswalk.

Edit: There are also sooo many incidents of psychotic road rage posted on social media that it makes you lose faith in humanity. But it's hard to tell if this is an uptick in incidents or an uptick in visibility.

One thing my parents taught me even in the '70s was that a red light or stop sign isn't going to make anyone stop. You never step into a crosswalk just because the light says it's OK.

Transition to trail running if you can. Ive stopped taking chances with road running because of the insane drivers. Same with biking. Added benefits of being in nature and getting off pavement helps your joints a bit.

+1. my favorite loops both have some streets though including ones without sidewalks. I run against traffic and it's basically a game of "does that driver see me" for decent stretches.

I understand why runners do this (asphalt is softer than concrete, no sidewalk in a given stretch) but as a cyclist I've had inattentive or aggressive(?) runners force me into traffic lanes by running contra-flow in a bike lane with painted directional arrows. Am not in your running shoes, so I won't judge where you need to run to feels safest, but please be on the lookout!

good point. I'm in the suburbs so no [explicitly] directional lanes but agreed runners should almost always yield nevertheless.

If you are a small woman and there are cougars in your area, trail running is also dangerous. You look like prey and trigger the hunting instinct. Pepper spray won't save you either, because they attack your neck from the rear. You're already dead before you are reaching for the spray!

Source: the signs outside Northern California open spaces (and the newspaper)

Since we have began keeping records in the late 1800s, there have been 26 confirmed deaths from cougar attacks in the US. Which is not to say one shouldn't be smart and aware of the situational risks of any activity, but calling it "dangerous" on that basis seems a bit extreme. In the past 30 years, despite a steady increase in hiking and trail-running, there have been 62 attacks total.

It is estimated that 50 million Americans go hiking each year, and of them 25,000 will die out on the trail. Hiking has some inherent risks. Cougar attacks should only be slightly higher than "swarmed to death by killer bees" on the list of reasons you don't go hiking or trail running.

Have ran 1000s of miles in cougar country without ever even seeing one ... Way more afraid, and more likely to be hit by a motorist on the road or struck by lightning. Not saying ignore the dangers of wildlife, but its very unlikely.

> Transition to trail running if you can.

Key phrase: if you can. I'm a runner too, and I run year 'round in a suburb that has all of the problems others here have mentioned. It is possible, and I've even written guides on how to do it safely. It just takes more effort. In particular, wearing headphones is even less advisable in winter than it is the rest of the year. You need to hear when vehicles are approaching, even if they're EVs and all you're getting is the tire/wind noise. It's certainly not for everyone.

For those who don't want to make the effort, I recommend cross-country skiing or snowshoes. Work with what you have.

That probably varies a lot by region and neighborhood. My neighbors and I don't usually stop at our stop sign. But the sight lines are good and none of us drive faster than 15 mph, so formally stopping just because there is a sign is not worth much. If someone is walking or riding their bike, we stop for them whether there's a stop sign or not. We did have a neighbor once who tended to speed, but peer pressure turns out to be pretty effective, he drives as slow as the rest of us now.

You should try to get the stop signs replaced by yields and possibly some traffic calming. A stop sign everyone blows through is a normalisation of deviance.

Backup cameras are Federally mandated in new cars because there was a predictable kill count of parents running over their own kids in their own driveways. Cars are so common that we don't really think about their dangers.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/cars-us-now-required-backup-camera...

There is a stop sign in front of my house and probably around 95% of cars stop, and the amount of cars that completely ignore it (ie don't even slow down) is easily <1%. I think this is just more of an issue with local cultural norms.

> There is a stop sign in front of my house and probably around 95% of cars stop

There was some discussion amongst my neighbors about a sign near us and we found that the key variable is the speed at which one considers a vehicle to be "stopped". Some folks felt that a 6 mph (10 kph) rolling stop at an empty intersection counted as a stop while others felt that anything more than 1 mph (1.6 kph) meant that the driver was running the stop sign. Since the majority of drivers fell somewhere in that range the estimates for how many people stopped were wildly different.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com