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Comment by undersuit | Hacker News Reader

Should we use technology to prevent it? YES

Why do people roll through stop signs? Complaints about acceleration and uselessness.

I easily see two fixes for acceleration. Make stopping and starting less jarring on occupants and reduce the need for the driver to switch from gas to brake pedals.

Uselessness can be resolved by a number of ways, make the area around the stop more open for better visibility, but we can definitely use technology to prevent people from rolling through stop signs. Set up sensors so that only one roadway has an active stop sign, when the sensors detect a single vehicle the stop sign on their way can be disabled. When the sensors detect intersecting vehicles both stop signs are activated.

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> Why do people roll through stop signs?

Because coming to full and complete stop at a four way intersection when the area you are in is entirely deserted and there are zero other cars or people is stupid. We know why stop signs exist. They are very useful when there are other cars and people around. They keep people's behavior predictable and that makes us safer. They are pointless when nobody else is around though. It's still good to slow down just to be safe, but there's no reason to come to a full stop.

>They are pointless when nobody else is around though. It's still good to slow down just to be safe, but there's no reason to come to a full stop.

And yet people still get hit rolling through stop signs.

> And yet people still get hit rolling through stop signs.

Not when there aren't any other people around they don't.

Stop signs are good things to follow when they are needed, and pointless to follow when they aren't. People who roll through when they shouldn't are just as bad as people who don't stop or slow down at all and laws do and should exist to punish them. There's no need for enforcement in all cases though. Consideration of context is justice. Brain-dead enforcement regardless of circumstance or outcome is just oppression.

No, they get hit when the driver thinks there aren’t other people around.

That's what slowing to a crawl is supposed to minimize. Not even coming to a full stop can prevent all accidents. There's no cure for the the blind/drunk/distracted/texting driver. They'll change lanes into other cars on a road with no stop signs, and on roads with them they can fail to see the sign entirely.

But if you've stopped and turned your head to look down both sides of the street instead of relying on your peripherals that suck at detecting changes in motion, you've done yourself a huge service in not getting hit.

I see people rolling through stop signs when pedestrians and o5er cars are plentiful. Obviously the way people drive has changed in the last 20 years, especially since police aren’t really writing tickets anymore.

Traffic circles work wonders for these behaviors.

depends if you live in neighbor hood laid out on a grid like I happen to, having a 4 way stop at every cross street on the grid is annoying and lead to starting and stopping every 200-150 feet it's stupid as there is virtually no traffic. but building a roundabout in the middle of every one of those intersections would be massive overkill and waste of space as it would take out each corner house on said grid. the best approach would be a low speed limit replace the stop signs with yield sign and turn the streets into alternating one-ways so you only have to check one direction for on coming traffic at each intersection

Interestingly enough, I lived in a part of Quebec City called Limoilou which is laid out exactly like you describe. Low speed limit, alternating one ways, very few stop signs. I think there are some boroughs in NYC that are like that as well.

I have turned the wrong way down a one way street one too many times, even after living there for several years:) surprisingly easy to do when not on GPS (not all one ways are properly marked)

A small round about, which is really just a traffic calming circle, can work wonders for neighborhood speeding. I prefer them to speed bumps anyways.

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