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Comment by ibejoeb | Hacker News Reader

That courtesy is almost always bad practice and is generally unlawful. You must yield right of way to a pedestrian at a legal crossing, but california has codes that prohibit impeding normal traffic flow, including stopping in the street to wave across a pedestrian where there is no such crossing. It's especially dangerous on multi-lane roads because the stopped vehicle can blind the pedestrian to other traffic.

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I would dispute saying it is almost always bad practice. Sometimes it is, people do dumb stuff, but in many cases it solves problems before they become a problem to start with because most humans are pretty good at predicting how others around them will react.

Stopping in the middle of the road to save a pedestrian 3 seconds while costing 5 cars on the road to wait 10 seconds is obviously dumb, but what about recognizing the gap near you in the line of cars is the only gap around for the pedestrian waiting ahead, and either slowing down or speeding up a little bit to open that gap wider which makes everybody safer and eliminates any real braking events.

You might not notice all the things people do now to make traffic move smoothly, either intentionally or not, but something as simple as a line of robot cars spreading out on a road can cause problems when traffic levels that normally leave large gaps for easier left turns, pedestrians, poor visibility crossings, etc, instead becomes a steady spaced stream of traffic that has to be disrupted to fit those other options. Very small things can result in large traffic bottlenecks. Humans aren't immune to it, we cause out own problems with things like traffic waves, but we also solve many problems ourselves without really thinking about it.

I think the comment you're responding to was referring to needing to cross a backed up lane of traffic in their car, not on foot.

Sure, there are valid scenarios. LA certainly has some terrible and legal vehicle crossings. (The fast, windy portion of beverly ranks.) I agree that it's hard to navigate without some cooperation. It's just that almost all of the crashes I've witnessed involved someone giving a bad go-ahead.

I wasn’t clear, but yes I meant in a car. During morning commute there are whole hours where certain roads are gridlocked leaving no space to cross. Beverly is one example of this.

There is no way to cross unless someone yields to let you through

I was a taxi driver in LA - I've lived the past 10 years in Portland. One major difference in driving style (at least before a lot of New Yorkers moved to LA) is that in LA, people merged late in a fluid style, and traffic shuffled. In Portland, people line up a mile before the sign for the exit lane, and aggressively don't let anyone in. Which means you have to be extra aggressive to get in if you don't want to wait in a voluntary Soviet line behind a hundred idiots with two brain cells and nowhere to be. Thankfully, Portlanders are all passive-aggressive, and much less likely to get out and attack you than Angelenos.

Personally I always let people in when they need to go. What does that cost me? A second or two? When people actively try to cut you off from merging it leads to more accidents and more road rage. Just merge peacefully and let people merge without getting your ego involved. That's more or less how LA used to be, at least before a million New Yorkers moved there who didn't know how to drive.

A lot of our society works/has less friction because of human courtesy. Systemically stamping it out of every interaction for optimization will not result in a better society.

Our systems don't cover every case, and it's better when we use human courtesy to solve the edge cases.

In many places, traffic would not function if drivers did not e.g. make space for other drivers to change lanes. It's an extraordinary claim to say such behaviour is bad practice (or even illegal??)

In that context, yes, there are certainly cases where making space is reasonable and legal, like stopping shy of side intersection while (traffic is stopped) to allow a turn.

Stopping or altering traffic isn't, though. You shouldn't stop at a green to allow another driver to maneuver for all the same reasons.

Imagine a street where cars are moving at 2mph because of traffic. Cars can never cross unless someone yields

I also hate that "courtesy." It blocks traffic behind the yielding car and is often done without considering that driver's surroundings (like impatient drivers switching lanes and speeding up to overtake the yielding car, increasing the chances of a collision with the crossing car).

"Courtesy causes confusion; confusion causes crashes"

That assumes you live in a place where the traffic system handles all edge cases

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