Four way stop signs.
April 12, 2008
One of the things that I’ve been meaning to write about whilst driving here in the U.S. is the existence of four way stop signs. These are roads where you have two roads intersecting each other and all four entrances into the intersection have a stop sign.
To be honest I’ve been a bit confused about who gives way to who when there are two or more cars at the intersection. Just doing a search now I found this post by Lionel E. Deimel which explained it – but as he points out, there are some holes in the strategy.
So basically if I arrive at the intersection first, then I get to go first. If I’m not I have to give way to the left – except when it gets messy, and then it is all about SURVIVAL 
Seriously though – I think we have way more round-abouts in Australia to stop exactly this problem. So when you have four equal streams of traffic coming together you are going to either get lights, or a round-about, not four stop signs (in fact, I can’t think of anywhere that I have been in Australia that has four stop signs).
April 12, 2008 at 10:46 pm
There’s one I’ve come across in Australia! It’s in Artarmon, on the lower North Shore (Sydney).
And yes, they’re very confusing!
April 14, 2008 at 9:05 am
I’m not sure if they’re still there, but in the suburbs of Newcastle (Cooks Hill / The Junction) there were heaps of them.
Then again, this was back in 1990 (right around the Newcastle Earthquake), I don’t remember whether they were still there last time I walked / drove through that area.
June 21, 2008 at 9:44 am
[...] Mitch has spoken about these before. These are mostly what Americans have instead of round-a-bouts. The rule is that everybody must stop and the first to arrive is the first to move off. [...]
August 25, 2009 at 3:16 am
[...] ordering system and a logic-flow direction symbol are examples… it was also raised by notgartner who basically favours the Darwinian ’survival of the fittest’ model … does that [...]
August 25, 2009 at 3:19 am
[...] ordering system and a logic-flow direction symbol are examples… it was also raised by notgartner who basically favours the Darwinian ’survival of the fittest’ model … does that [...]