🚀 go-pugleaf

On Sat, 04 Jul 1998 07:53:01 GMT, E. Faubion <in@the.sig> wrote:
>
>>>  Stop signs and signal lights can be run safely.
>
>>Not by me.
>
>No one is coming on the cross street and you can't run the stop sign
>or signal light safely?... but you *can* speed safely?  That's a
>contradiction.

No, it isn't.  Speeding is merely a differential increase in continued
velocity, and in the cases being referred to here, just an arbitrary legal 
fiction.  Running a stop sign is assuming no one is coming, where engineers
have determined though study that such assumption is incorrect.

Near my house is a stop sign that is incorrectly  engineered from a traffic
standpoint.  This is a T intersection, where the through road (and it's double
yellow line) follows the stem and left side of the T, and a private road is the 
right side.  A yield sign for the private to public direction.  Originally, a
yield sign for the stem side.  There were many accidents, because those coming
up the stem would think those coming from the left would follow the road down
the stem.  Those coming from the left wouldn't signal when going onto the 
private road, because to them, it was going straight.  Eventually, the yield 
sign on the stem was replaced by a stop sign.  This made matters worse, 
because now you have the ambiguity of a stop sign versus a yield sign - with
the yield on the right.  The engineering error is to think that people will
trust signs over their own observations in an ambiguous situation.  So now,
motocops wait in the bushes to nail people who run the stop sign, making the 
right turn.  This is a stop sign that to run is no more dangerous than the 
yield sign that preceded it - you just have to look if someone is coming from 
the left.

What pisses me off is to see the cops leave after nailing somebody.  They 
invariably run the stop sign at the next T intersection, which really does
have dangerous cross traffic.  One local has a Hummer...


>
>>There's a point where it is soooooo dang easy that it's sooooo dang boring that one loses
>>focus on what one is doing, thereby making it _less_ safe.
>
>That's about the worst excuse I've ever heard.   A reasonable driver
>will get off the road and take a break when fatigue or boredom sets
>in.  Why don't you?

A reasonable driver may not correctly judge his state.  You don't seem to know
much about perception.  Stare at the period at the end of this sentence for 
nine hours.  Then look away.  See anything?

> 
>>They don't know me.  I've had those that _ride_ with me tell me that they believe I'm the
>>safest driver they know.
>
>Don't listen to them.  They obviously have no idea what they are
>talking about.
>
>
>efaubion@oklahoma.net
>http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Prairie/6123/


-- 
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