I also find it humorous that the busybodies who insist that stop signs be installed every block of their neighborhood arterial have to suffer from the resulting air and noise pollution.
I drive 'spiritedly', but I suppose the tire wear due to hard cornering is not nearly offset by the saved brake pad and exhaust emissions!
I moved to the US from the UK, where yield ("give way") signs were the standard and stop signs an attention-getting rarity.
I've often wondered how much harm to health has been done by the increased emissions at excess of stop signs (at least in the parts of the US I've visited). Does it outweigh whatever reduction in accidents you get by forcing a stop at junctions which (to my untrained eye) could safely be controlled with a yield?
I would be surprised if it did. The way a lot of our roads have been designed doesn’t really make yield signs an option. Only recently has the US begun to embrace roundabouts over the basic 90 degree intersection. Unfortunately, it’s hard to retrofit existing intersections because roundabouts take more space.
Why aren’t yield signs an option? In Europe they’re ubiquitous, everywhere where a road or street lower in the road hierarchy crosses a higher-tier one. No roundabout needed. As far as I know they work just fine.
As you say, roundabouts take up more space, and they are not nice for pedestrians. They're good for major interchanges if you don't want to build an underpass and there's lots of land. If land is cheap though, where are all the cars coming from?
In the 90s, many roundabouts were removed especially in the northeast. I don’t think this is true. In New Jersey alone I can remember seven or more very large roundabouts that were removed.
Those that you’re thinking of were likely “rotaries” which have some major design, functional, and qualitative differences as compared to roundabouts. Size, travel speed, and enforeced entry angle are the main differences between rotaries and roundabouts.
And then to confuse matters further “traffic circles” are common as traffic calming devices on the west coast. These are also round, but are very small and do not have a splitter island preceding. They usually sit in the middle of small residential intersections.
Also, sometimes rotaries (the largest, fastest, and most dangerous of the trifecta of round traffic things) are sometimes called traffic circles, which are otherwise the smallest / slowest traffic device.
If all that is confusing, well, you’re not alone. My feeling is that roundabouts and traffic circles are good, but rotaries are just highway interchange supercolliders. Removing them from the northeast was very good.
you missed an important purpose of stop signs which is to make a route less appealing to motorists in the first place. ultimately this is necessary if the volume of traffic is ever to be reduced.
Stop signs are a pretty bad solution for traffic calming, though. The key to effective traffic calming is to shape drivers’ natural behaviors, not authoritatively demand it.
A stop sign that serves no purpose than to slow people down will piss off drivers more than anything, and lead to people speeding between signs or running them. It will make your street noisier as impatient people aggressively obey the signs.
A typical neighborhood would be much better off if traffic was calmed by adding kerb extensions or narrowing the lanes.
I think the above commenter might share my frustration that local politics is often full of people unknowingly demanding the wrong solution to their problem.
As someone who lives in a neighborhood full of stop signs (just about every other street is signed), I find that it actually does exactly what you're saying, i.e. shape drivers' natural behaviors.
Almost everyone elects to drive on one of the nearby "thoroughfares" rather than stop and start all the way through the neighborhood. So I see stop signs as the perfect solution.
I'd agree this wouldn't probably work on a road that sees heavy traffic already though.
Stop signs are not meant to calm traffic, they're safety features. When you have to stop, you're not blindly driving into traffic, that's the whole point. You stop, you need to start driving again, you have the time to look to the left and to the right.
In retrospect, saying that I drive spiritedly immediately after talking about neighborhoods, was unfortunate juxtaposition on my part. The two are not related!
Nope! I don't speed through neighborhoods; in fact, I drive more slowly than most people through them. I did, however, have a commute through a neighborhood, for 10 years. (There was a 30mph arterial off of which spur roads went into the neighborhoods; no houses fronted the road, just fences).
A number of 4-way stops existed on the route to the office complex for no valid reason whatsoever. The arterial traffic was the vast majority of traffic. I watched over the course of 10 years as more 4-way stops were installed to calm traffic, which is specifically contra-indicated by proper traffic engineering. In fact, I remember reporting on one community meeting, where the community hired a traffic engineer who specifically told them not to use stop signs for traffic calming; they did anyway.
The stop signs actually took away from the attention folks paid to cross streets. Eyes down, stare at stop line, come to a stop, go.. it was much easier to not notice cross traffic or pedestrians!
They all should have been roundabouts, frankly.
Anyway, my point is, 4 way stops are an environmental nightmare in every possible way, and rarely the correct solution.
My recommendation is to consider getting into motorcycles (seriously!). People who push things in their car are largely externalizing risk to other people. Motorcycles largely internalize their risk.
You can get an inexpensive motorcycle that will likely thrash any car you’re likely to afford. Plus, the skill required to operate a motorcycle makes it a lot more engaging to ride. Lastly, motorcycling is just far more exhilarating than driving.
I don’t want to shame you for wanting to drive hard, but you can satisfy your desires more fully while reducing the chances of killing or disabling someone who doesn’t have your appetite for risk.
EDIT: I am a motorcyclist, but not a very spirited rider. It turns out riding safely is plenty of excitement for me. I have friends who love to push it however, and I only challenge them to wear better gear and learn more skills.
I also know people who do the periodic track day in their performance cars, and then dial it back on city streets. It's another way to get your thrill on while still minimizing risks to others. It's apparently a blast—I'm not sure I'm ready for it, but I'm sure some day I'll work up the courage.
Yeah, I've got a dozen or so track days under my belt, and have done some car control/teen driver instruction as well.
I no longer feel the need/desire to "go for a spirited drive" on the weekends, or whatever. Part of that is age, part of it experience, I suppose. But I very much enjoy a good run at an on-ramp or particularly nice section of open road from time to time.
I also find it humorous that the busybodies who insist that stop signs be installed every block of their neighborhood arterial have to suffer from the resulting air and noise pollution.
I drive 'spiritedly', but I suppose the tire wear due to hard cornering is not nearly offset by the saved brake pad and exhaust emissions!