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Driven across Europe and in North America, I find it quite annoying how many unnecessary 'Stop signs' there are in the US and Canada when most of those could be replaced with a 'Yield' sign since most people treat them as such anyway. It feels like 'Yield signs' are only placed by highway and road entrance (ramps) and sometimes when making a right turn with a small island barrier, otherwise it's 'Stop signs' everywhere, including by residential streets, shopping plazas, etc. and used as speed controls unfortunately!.
Last edited by MX City visiting; 06-02-2015 at 08:25 AM..
Stop signs are use for Speed Control in a lot of places.
Every intersection there needs to be some signage to tell who has the right of way. Stop sign do that.
While It should be common sense that the main road has the right of way, you don't want to leave it to each driver to determine if the road they are on is the "Main" road or not. If some one has a accident someone is at fault. Stop sign help determine it.
It's a cheap way to do traffic calming when you really don't have the guts to use an appropriate design speed and do traffic calming, especially in residential areas. Pretty pointless to have 30 or 35 mph speed limits posted when there are stop signs every 1-2 blocks. 25 or even 20 with narrow lanes and raised crosswalks, would be more than sufficient for local traffic to get around. Also, there's nothing more discouraging to would-be cut-through traffic than turning off the main road and seeing a 20 mph speed limit and encountering a speed bump.
Another thing is many expressway ramps use a stop sign with a crosswalk in front with the idea that drivers would be more likely to actually stop for a pedestrian. Unfortunately, yielding and stopping to let pedestrians use the crosswalk is a foreign concept to many of us--in many situations drivers won't stop unless they see a red light.
I find more and more 4 way stop signs being put up on the residential streets in my area. There are very few dips or speed bumps, so stop signs are a normal way to slow traffic. I generally hear about stop signs being up when someone dies from a speeding car on residential streets. They drove too fast and hit someone crossing at the the corner or striped crosswalk a school and didnt see them until it was too late (Last year deaths 1 was an old lady slow crossing at crosswalk at night, and the other a mother crossing near a school with 2 kids). Sad it takes a death or a major accident to put traffic calming on residential streets.
Roundabout doesn't make too much sense in residential or commercial areas because they make crossing the road difficult.
If we had roundabouts everywhere, then pedestrians could only cross in the straight stretch between two intersections/roundabouts... that could make things rather inconvenient for both pedestrian and cars... probably more inconvenient than having traditional stop signs and traffic lights with intersection crosswalks.
Roundabouts might make more sense in rural and major throughway settings where there would be very few or no pedestrian activities.
Stop signs are use for Speed Control in a lot of places.
Every intersection there needs to be some signage to tell who has the right of way. Stop sign do that.
While It should be common sense that the main road has the right of way, you don't want to leave it to each driver to determine if the road they are on is the "Main" road or not. If some one has a accident someone is at fault. Stop sign help determine it.
Ask any traffic engineer. Stop signs are not to be used for speed control.
You should visit Spokane, Wa, the neighborhood streets have no signs whatsoever. You never know if someone is gonna yield an an intersection or blow straight through it.
It's a cheap way to do traffic calming when you really don't have the guts to use an appropriate design speed and do traffic calming, especially in residential areas. Pretty pointless to have 30 or 35 mph speed limits posted when there are stop signs every 1-2 blocks. 25 or even 20 with narrow lanes and raised crosswalks, would be more than sufficient for local traffic to get around. Also, there's nothing more discouraging to would-be cut-through traffic than turning off the main road and seeing a 20 mph speed limit and encountering a speed bump.
It's not typically "not having the guts", it's that those things cost a hell of a lot more money to install and maintain than slapping a 4-way stop sign in every block or couple of blocks does.
For example, speed bumps and raised crosswalks cause a ton of issues for effective snow clearance and also get destroyed by said snowplows in a year or two requiring replacement to continue to be effective at traffic calming. In contrast, the stop sign will be up for 20+ years with no action required.
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. 25 or even 20 with narrow lanes and raised crosswalks, would be more than sufficient for local traffic to get around. Also, there's nothing more discouraging to would-be cut-through traffic than turning off the main road and seeing a 20 mph speed limit and encountering a speed bump. 