Get rid of the vast majority of stop signs, and you’ve eliminated a huge amount of the problem this law seeks to solve.
They are almost all 4 way stops, with regular traffic in all directions. If you made it an uncontrolled intersection, or added a yield sign, the road with the yield sign would never get a chance to go.
In fact, there are a number of places along my route to my daughters school where I take a slightly longer way to avoid the intersections without a 4 way stop because I would end up sitting forever trying to turn if I went to one of them.
That's because the roads, as they currently are, were designed for stop signs. Removing those stop signs is going to usually involve changing the roads a bit too.
> I have yet to see a single city where the vast majority of stop-sign-controlled intersections couldn’t have been better served with yield signs.
So I was giving an example of a city where that wasn’t the case. I never said all stop signs are necessary, I was only disputing the point that most stop signs in ALL cities aren’t necessary.
But cities like LA have grown so much that even if they had that at one point effectively every street is a parallel collector and so the traffic volumes are too high.
The “rolling stop” is just proof that most intersections could be unsigned, and then use stop and yield to alert to specifically dangerous ones.
If you rarely or never saw a stop sign, one appearing would be an awakening.
I know there's a push to replace stop lights and signs with traffic circles. But I haven't heard the same for residential stop signs. I've just read that they prefer to eliminate 4-ways stops because 3-ways are much safer..
There’s plenty of it. If you want to start from the pollution angle, consider the pollution caused by a stop/start rather than steady-speed cruise through the intersection. Enormous difference.
Many other countries get by with far fewer stop signs and have far fewer traffic fatalities. Not sure if there's a causative relationship there, but it doesn't seem to be hurting.
If you look at modern American suburban streets, you'll see this idea in action. Most intersections are 3-way vs the grid layout common in older areas.
Stop and immediately go is particularly a problem for less visible road users like pedestrians and cyclists.
It’s when there’s a huge speed differential and no signaling that it becomes a problem as traffic gets higher.