Comment by tharkun__ | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tharkun__ | Hacker News Reader

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It works well enough in other countries than America.

E.g. in the Netherlands or Germany there's no need for 4-way stops and such. If no other signage applies, then whoever is on the "right" side has priority over the people on the "left" side. And exceptions do apply, i.e. it's not "that simple" either. It does depend on whether both roads are on the same level or not. A road to your right that has a sidewalk border stone running across it does not give them the right of way, while if the sidewalk border stops and both roads intersect directly at the same level, then the road to your right does have right of way.

So e.g. if you take a typical urban development with lots of little streets and houses, where you'd see a lot of rolling stops in America, nobody's gonna stop at every intersection, rolling or not there. This does go as far as when cars from all directions arrive at the same time, then nobody has automatic right of way and one of them has to wave the person to their right through and will be the last allowed to proceed.

I think you may not be familiar with how it works typically in the US. In the US residential streets are almost always 2 way stops. The streets on the narrow sides of the blocks only typically stop when two of these roads cross. Residential areas are laid out to minimize those crossings. Bigger streets than those are controlled by lights. Most people shouldn't come across more than two 4 way stops. Unless you are driving to another residential area. My case is an outlier in that I have to cross from into the older part of town that isn't on the typical NSEW grid. For my drive 1.5 mile drive, one way is four 4 way stops (42 intersections) and the other is two (21 intersections). I'm not sure your wave is necessarily better during the day you almost always have multiple cars at the intersection. I'm not sure if in your description if only one car would go at a time, but in a 4 way stop it pretty much syncs up so the majority of the time two cars are crossing at the same time. Not much of a burden.

No two way stops either. The non right of way sides simply have a sign that tells them they don't have the right of way (upside down red bordered triangle) or nothing at all but the effect is the same. You'll slow down a bit to be able to make sure there's nobody coming from your left but you are not expected or required to stop at all.

In essence it's a sign for you to do a rolling stop so to speak actually. But if sightlines are good you can go as fast as the turn radius allows.

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