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Comment by ahoy | Hacker News Reader

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

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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.

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.

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