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Comment by devilbunny | Hacker News Reader

The US doesn't really have those basic rules of the road the way most of Europe does. There are essentially no intersections that are not controlled at all by either specific signs or lights. Often, if one road outranks the other, and you're on the lesser road, they will have a stop sign for you and then reinforce it with "CROSS TRAFFIC DOES NOT STOP".

For example, in the UK, roundabouts will be perhaps signposted as coming up - but when you get there, you just yield to the cars already in it, because that's the base law. In the US, roundabouts are less common, and they have a yield sign at every entrance.

Boston is, however, a deviation. Many roads date to the founding of the city and are much like older European cities in terms of layout, but lack any modern signposting.

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We do. Example from Oregon:

ORS 811.275

(1) A person commits the offense of failure to yield the right of way at an uncontrolled intersection if the person is operating a motor vehicle that is approaching an uncontrolled highway intersection and the person does not look out for and give right of way to any driver on the right simultaneously approaching a given point, regardless of which driver first reaches and enters the intersection.

https://oregon.public.law/statutes/ors_811.275

There are a lot of state laws that resemble each other, but there are often subtle differences. My point is that there is no overarching coordination other than maybe AASHTO (which can only make recommendations), and legislators are often only interested in the highway department if there's a contract they can steer to a friend.

Similar rules exist in New York as well.

I'd expect they exist in most places in the US.

> The US doesn't really have those basic rules of the road the way most of Europe does.

Yes, it does. But getting permission to drive is cheap and easy in the US, and many people don't know the rules of the road.

> There are essentially no intersections that are not controlled at all by either specific signs or lights.

There are lots of intersections without signs or lights, IME (admittedly, I haven't driven everywhere in the US.)

We also have a constant influx of new drivers from other areas, so local norms don't have time to gel.

This is wild, are you telling me that the United States has no concept of the four-way stop?

If I encountered an intersection with no signage at all, the default expectation would be four-way stop.

> This is wild, are you telling me that the United States has no concept of the four-way stop?

The US has the concept, but it's not (in California, at least) the default rule for an uncontrolled intersection. For a regular uncontrolled intersection, it is treated as a four-way yield, only a blind intersection (one with less than 100 foot visibility in any direction in the last 100 feet of approach) is treated as a four-way stop.

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