And then there are towns in the US that don’t put any signs of any type at backstreet intersections… there are rules for that (it becomes a 4-way yield), and the locals know them, but it takes getting used to.
There are often multiple decision points at a stop or yield sign. I see so many motorists who ignore the yield-to-pedestrian yield point (which is usually the one with the regulatory white line, or at minimum the plane of a sidewalk) and make their stop at the last possible point into the intersectio, presumably because they need to move that far forward to see if the cross street is clear. This puts pedestrians at a disadvantage - for their own safety they yield to the moving vehicle where in the law it should be the motorist yielding to them, a bit of a game of chicken which benefits the in-a-hurry driver.
I suspect that as self driving vehicles advance, the argument will be made that they can actually detect and respond to intersections better than human drivers, and for reasons of vehicle throughput and fuel consumption they should be allowed to roll through controlled intersections when they detect that the way is clear. (If you watch youtube, many AV’s are pretty aggressive at yellow lights… because the computer has a much more accurate calculation of stopping distance and time remaining on the yellow than a human driver can accomplish). But for humans, the rhythm of coming to a complete stop, taking a moment to judge the pedestrian environment, then advancing to the threshold and checking vehicular conflict, is a whole lot safer and error-minimising.
Yield signs enable split second decisionmaking and bad habits… I would say they are more risk than benefit right now.
- Paul
