You’re probably right. When I lived in eastern San Diego county, we had an uncontrolled T intersection at the end of our quiet country road. Every six or eight months, some idiot driver in a hurry to get to the Indian casino would come down the straight part way too fast and nail someone turning out of the base of the T. The road department in its infinite wisdom put up a sign and called it good, which made absolutely no difference. The people in the house at the top of the T put a camera there but ended up taking it down because someone’s insurance company sued them for deleting the old pictures.
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Friends up there call this the “Mercer Slide.”
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I like it. I’ve been to Climate Pledge Arena two times in the past few months so I had to take this route. Traffic was mercifully light but it was still thrilling to say the least. (Even though the last time I just decided to save myself a little stress and take Denny instead. I don’t think that it was all that much better in the long run given how shitty that road is these days.)
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There are a few of these near me in Philadelphia. Homeowners at the bottom of those ramps have no recourse other than to build their own sturdy barriers to protect their property.
This, of course does a lot more damage to the cars, but the city isn’t about to spend money on thinking about one taxpayer.
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You guys have obviously never driven on the Edens Expressway north of Chicago. 30’ of on-ramp followed by the off-ramp using the same 30’ ramp.
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More scary than funny.
I’ve been down that offramp dozens of times. It’s under the tightly packed convention center in the heart of downtown. It’s a shorter offramp on the spectrum, a single right turn that immediately drops you into an intersection in the middle of downtown. If you don’t pay attention to offramp speed sign, and esp if roadway is wet, you’re potentially screwed. The problem is not that it’s new, just the opposite. It’s old engineering and near impossible to correct because of the intensely packed density, so that’s what it’s been like for decades. Similarly there’s an infamous 2 (!) lane I-5 bottleneck there that’s also persisted for decades that hasn’t been resolved for the same reasons.
I hadn’t seen that supercut before but it doesn’t surprise me. Clearly some flashy light signage is needed for drivers approaching that blind corner.
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I think one of the problems with this exit is that it’s fairly easy to end up taking it accidentally without meaning to take an exit. And once you do, you’re immediately on a city street with a looming intersection. It’s also going downhill, which isn’t obvious from this video.
I agree with other commenters, though. This is far from the worst traffic abomination in Seattle.
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Infrastructure needs to be designed with the existence of stupid people in mind. If one person ignores a sign and has an accident at an offramp it’s a stupid-person problem. If hundreds of people ignore a sign and have accidents then it’s a badly designed offramp.
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Not a downhill right turn exit. Downhill after the intersection.
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You’re right. I was conflating this with the James street exit, I think.
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You can actually see the camera on Google Street View!
.google.com/maps/@47.6107243,-122.3322224,3a,15y,323.25h,142.26t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sG0tbgBPQCLX8AqairaMw8g!2e0!7i16384!8i8192
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Right? But even then it’s like you get much time to react. Once you’re at the point of no return, this is what you’ve got:
Then you’re thrust right into the middle of downtown — with merging traffic from your right and parking garage traffic from your left, and a traffic light that’s never in your favor:
(This is also exactly where the cam in the OP is pointing.)
It’s amazingly shitty, but not unmanageable if you’re paying a modicum of attention.
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As @Brainspore says above, idiots are part of the world and need to be considered in designing things. This is one of the things Murphy was talking about.
Replace the landscaping with deep sand.
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Of all the highways running into, through, and out of Chicago, that’s the segment you pick as the most difficult?
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In particular, running a red light at a busy intersection is really asking for trouble, and I see people do it all the time.
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I used to use that exact route to get downtown when I used to live near the University in Seattle. Crossing all those lanes was increadibly stressfull. The pass on the right cars made it extra fun…
And of course a lot of people cant seem to conciously adjust from 80mph to 30 mph in a reasonable time frame at any exit.
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Yes, and I’d like to add that “stupid people” is all of us. It’s really easy to get classist with these kinds of judgy threads, but we are all stupid sometimes. We’ve all driven when we were too tired, when we shouldn’t have had that second beer, when we’re late for something, when we just had a fight with our spouse and we’re mad, etc.
When you live in a city it’s easy to think “everyone on the road is a stupid maniac” but I think it’s mostly a numbers game. We all have a bad day once in a while, and if (for example in Los Angeles) you’re out there driving with 13 million other people, there is someone having their periodic bad day near you at all times.
Of course some people are genuinely worse drivers than others, but that curve is a lot flatter than we all like to think IMHO. Good design, whether for software UX or road systems or whatever, takes human frailty into account. It doesn’t blame us for its failings,
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Well, yeah, there is a sign: 20 mph. But c’mon, ain’t nobody got time for that.
Truth is, it’s doable if you’re on the ball, and you’d better be, on I-5. If you’re not, there’s no margin, TS.
The alternative is to do away with this exit entirely and see how everyone likes that. There is literally nowhere else for it to be, if it’s going to exist. As others have said it is densely packed there – this ramp is hemmed in by building foundations.
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There is a stop light with a pedestrian crossing not far from the end of this exit. NOT being careful could get someone killed.
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