British Columbia flashing green traffic light = pedestrian-controlled intersection

Worf contemplates a move to Canda

he never smiles star trek GIF

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He’ll love Canadian gagh!

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Basically the exact same dish!

deal with it GIF

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Those are usually at zebra crossings. If someone’s crossing at a zebra crossing, they have the right of way, regardless of there are yellow lights, but the lights add visibility.

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You mean there’s a difference between a solid green and a flashing green? I’m going to look for that, since I see both around here. I think.

Since we’re on the subject, let’s just ban right turn on red. It increases pedestrian risk with benefits only to the drivers.

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that was incredibly dorky. +10 points

i definitely didn’t know about trying to align the wheel with the loop. i’ll try that. thanks!

( not knowing the exact science, i’ve always tried to have my bike cross the loop at more than one place. it works… mostly. maybe the persistent few that don’t will work better with the wheel aligned. )

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That’s apparently what started all this, yah. Solid green means there’s no chance of a pedestrian crossing at the road you are turning into. I don’t recall if there were flashing and solid arrows in Alberta. I thought they all flashed, but it may be that there was always a crosswalk (as there almost always is) so I never happened to notice the arrow is sometimes solid.

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And even at crosswalks it seems it’s always the last car in a line that stops. I suppose it makes sense since they don’t have any cars immediately behind them.

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if there’s no one behind them, ive got to believe it’s just so they can pat themselves on the back believing they’re doing a good deed

i mean they know they aren’t making it through the next light anyway, so let’s make this pedestrian wait too while the car slowly comes to a stop and the pedestrian checks to make sure the car isn’t randomly going to start moving again

Its A Trap Movie GIF by Star Wars

( what? no. this isn’t a pet peeve. what are you talking about? :smile_cat: )

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Gawd, I used to fecking hate it on one bike commute route in DC when motorists would stop and insist that I go. It was always after I’d already stopped (respecting traffic laws), and seemed to usually be on an uphill. It would turn into this whole standoff sometimes, with them waving me on, me motioning that, no, they should go, and pointing at the light.
People behind them would honk and be angry. Often I’d give in and kick off and struggle starting from a complete stop on an uphill with an audience of motorists. I hate those kinds of drivers. :rage:

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One of the portions of this post that didn’t survive my first edit was about how the traffic lights operated in 1990’s South Korea (unsure if the lights still work this way, so chime in if you’re in South Korea or know whether it’s still like this), where the lights go from Red → Yellow → Green to alert drivers of an impending signal change from a standstill. The first time I drove in South Korea at the tail end of the 90’s was an eye-opener (Asian-Eye pun intended), where the drivers come to a complete stop, shut their engine and headlights off while waiting for the light to turn yellow, causing the drivers to start their engines like some silent announcer called out over a P.A. system: “Start your engines!” Some would rev their engine like the obligatory 2-click tong motion upon picking a pair up, and once the light turned green, headlights would flick on and I swear on a stack of Gideon’s a mile high that it felt like everyone pressed their accelerator at the same time and traffic resumed flow like it was laminar.

One other thing about South Korea driving, the cops there roll around with the cherries lit constantly, and they are colloquially known as a “White Car” for obvious reasons:

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hmm, all the loop detector cut-outs are rectangular and much larger where I am, but I can at least give it a shot now.

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  • car stopped at the stop sign perpendicular to my lane
  • slow my bike to the slowest crawl hoping they’ll go so I can do a rolling stop and not dismount
  • car remains stopped
  • ok, well, they have the right of way, I’ll come to a full stop and dismount, that way they know I’m not going to blow the stop sign and cause them any hazzard
  • car remains stopped
  • look directly at the windshield, make direct eye contact assuming I can see through their glass, wave for them to go through
  • car remains stopped. assuming I can see through their glass, they start waving me through

GAH! are you fucking kidding me? we both could have been 100 yards away by now if they had just obeyed the right of way.

although, because of this, I now lead with waving cars through as I approach the intersection and thankfully the majority of them “get it.” but I had a stand-off just yesterday who refused my wave and countered with her own wave ( ._.)

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that can be dangerous though because you can’t always see what they can. or if there are two drivers: they can both think waving means it’s clear and then bad things happen.

it is a true pain though. i will full get off my bike and sit on it sideways to convey: no i’m not going anywhere.

those drivers don’t seem to realize that even if they don’t intend to kill you, other drivers sure do. i’m not going to get in front of an suv or lifted truck if it’s suddenly going to leap forward

( for their part, i somewhat understand. where i live bicyclists are allowed to run stop signs if there are no cars waiting.

so possibly they assume bicyclists never have to, or never do, stop at stop signs. but that’s not really been my experience. and also. i’m stopped already. )

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possibly… but not just bikes make some important inroads…

I thought he played association football? He should move to Ireland though, hurling is a true Klingon sport.

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winona-thats-good-point

Oh, hey, I didn’t realize that imomanaiocht had UNESO heritage status! Pretty neat!

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I have a similar peeve about crossing streets as a pedestrian if a car is approaching the same intersection, and it’s relatively quiet otherwise. It’s quicker for all of us if they just go and I’ll cross behind them instead of them stopping while I’m still 10’ from the corner, waiting for me to get to the corner and cross while they sit there the whole time. I appreciate the courtesy, but would honestly prefer they just go in that situation.

This happened so often in one city I lived in that I learned to fake body language that I was walking around the corner, not crossing, so they would not wait to see if I was going to cross. I start making the turn, then as they pull out, I cut back in and cross behind them. Win-win.

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totally. I used to do a similar thing when I was walking my dog, I’d take my eyes off the road to lean down and pet her until the car passed.

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