71–80 of 464 posts
Please. This is the most drama-queen characterisation of a signal-controlled pedestrian crossing I've ever seen. In fact it's the first time I've seen anyone grinding their teeth at the injustice of a signal-controlled pedestrian crossing.
This is a solved problem and it's astonishing the world hasn't just adopted the Dutch traffic engineering standards outright. It's FASTER for cars and safer for people.
The lack of adoption of best practices from other countries is generally baffling to me. When I first visited China grim Europe and saw traffic lights with countdowns (like in the US) I thought we did immediately adopt this in Europe. Cultural inertia and lack of looking outwards is really frustrating.
Though it's nice on pedestrian signals.
> I captured two drivers ripping through red lights in that short span Video actually shows two cars entering the intersection on yellow lights, which is legal. The rest of the article seems similarly exaggerated. ---- Edit: For those who disagree, please be aware that the stop lines are out of frame, so both cars are already in the intersection before they're visible on the video. You can get a better picture of wha…
You can not say this without the caveat that it is location dependent. This is an illegal action in some cities and states. Like in California, where that video was taken, yellow means STOP if you can safely do so. Both of these cars had ample time to stop and chose to accelerate to make the light.
They entered the intersection on a yellow light, which is perfectly legal if they could not stop.
As a pedestrian I will take a busy light controlled intersection with a pedestrian scramble type walk signal over a busy 4-way stop where every single time. With the 4-way stop there is never a time in the cycle when all traffic is stopped. The drivers who are present are continuously paying attention to what other drivers are doing which robs them of situational awareness to note pedestrians. You can try and time it…
Having almost been hit a few times by drivers making a right turn on red, I can tell you the drivers never wait even if you have the right of way. You'll be lucky if they even look for you.
> Legally having the right of way doesn't make you any less dead when the driver who's got three other drivers to pay attention to doesn't see you.
Also, and I know this is unpopular, but maybe you shouldn't dress like that if you don't want the attention.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Generally speaking if you're going the speed limit you don't need to "slam on your breaks (sic)" to stop before a light turns red unless you didn't have enough time to clear the intersection anyway.
Depends how far you are away from the light when it turns.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not only legal, but safer than slamming on one's breaks.
Generally speaking if you're going the speed limit you don't need to "slam on your breaks (sic)" to stop before a light turns red unless you didn't have enough time to clear the intersection anyway.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You think pedestrians and cyclists don't realize how car dominant we are?
Correct. They expect safe walking and biking infra to fall from the sky and complain online when it does not.
And I don't think pedestrian infrastructure advocates expect it to "fall from the sky". They expect it to be built by municipalities over time, just like everyone else.
> I captured two drivers ripping through red lights in that short span Video actually shows two cars entering the intersection on yellow lights, which is legal. The rest of the article seems similarly exaggerated. ---- Edit: For those who disagree, please be aware that the stop lines are out of frame, so both cars are already in the intersection before they're visible on the video. You can get a better picture of wha…
Legality aside, is that not kind of the issue here? Lights in a high foot traffic area could incentivize people to speed up to make it before the red, which is less predictable and has cars traveling at faster speeds compared to a stop sign, which requires all cars to stop. Embellished yes, but point of the article showing that this intersection is now more dangerous to pedestrians stands imo.
Perhaps the author of this article is upset that the neighborhood now has more traffic than it used to, but that's a different issue.
> I captured two drivers ripping through red lights in that short span Video actually shows two cars entering the intersection on yellow lights, which is legal. The rest of the article seems similarly exaggerated. ---- Edit: For those who disagree, please be aware that the stop lines are out of frame, so both cars are already in the intersection before they're visible on the video. You can get a better picture of wha…
Yellow generally means do not enter the intersection unless you are so close that you cannot reasonably stop. It is not legal to enter the intersection if you cannot clear it before the signal turns red. Exact rules and enforcement vary by state.
That does not appear to be the case in California, which this article is written about. It seems to be a bit confusing, because there are suggestions that the driver handbook suggests that you should follow the rule you note, but that the law itself has no such requirement.
In practice, in many areas of coastal California almost no one would stop at a yellow unless they felt they could not enter the intersection before it turned red, and doing otherwise would likely be seen as impeding traffic by many other drivers.
The county where I live recently (within the last couple of years) redid a two-way stop along the road I take to work. It used to be east-west that had the stop signs, but for some reason they switched them to north-south. Even more baffling, they didn't repaint the stop lines so east-west still had those and north-south didn't. It effectively turned the intersection into a four-way stop with extra confusion, frustra…