Saw it when it first came out.
It was creepy alright.
It’s brutal and mundane at the same time.
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Has that phrase-- “A four-way stop here might help” ever been true? Not far from me some genius put in a four way stop where a 4-lane road crosses a 2-lane road, and whenever it gets busy, no one can tell when they are supposed to go, so it’s a massive game of chicken. And don’t say “You just yield to the driver to your right” because you can simultaneously have as many as four cars going straight at the same time, or two straight and two turning right. After that happens, who goes next?
You can even see in this Google Street View of this intersection that two cars are using the intersection at the same time-- one is going straight and the other is going right. They are both being safe, but if there were more cars waiting, who would go next?
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Not me either.
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Changed since I lived in the region. Maybe there was a pub at the intersection and that was about it. I remember driving around the area on a pitch black night trying to find a nearby village where my brother lived. This was without a map and long before GPS days and cellphones. I only had a hazy relocation of the route I had to take. It was not a pleasant trip.
Damned if I know, it happened after I moved back to the US. For many years I used to go through that intersection every day, either by car, bicycle, or on foot, and it was never a problem. All I can think of is maybe there was a one-time road improvement grant available, and they bought all the signals at once with the idea of eventually transplanting them to locations where they might really be needed.
The “conservation” reason complicates electrification of the area in order to install traffic lights or the lighting that regulations require before you can put up speed bumps.
The layout, on the other hand, can’t be changed because of “conservative” reasons, more precisely a local conservative government that doesn’t want to pay for those changes
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Yes, but the example you show is absolutely the wrong place for it. In my neighborhood four-way stops are used for intersections of 2-lane roads with a modest amount of traffic in all directions. With, say, four or five vehicles backed up in each direction at rush hour, and usually fewer, it’s not hard to keep track of whose turn it is. If it’s not clear, eye contact and a nod is usually enough, and if someone gets it wrong, nobody is moving very fast. It certainly makes things safer for pedestrians, since they have the right of way.
That said, since several commenters have explained that UK drivers are befuddled by stop signs, my suggestion clearly wouldn’t help.
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Mod note: “It’s the cyclists fault” bullshit will not be tolerated here. As a driver, whether you like it or not, you share the road with cyclists, motorcyclists, and pedestrians who have no defence if you decide to behave in a way that mows them down. The opposite is not true, and as a result, drivers carry the burden of action here.
The idea that “cyclists are just whining” about this issue demonstrates a callous disregard for the lives lost, and any posts suggesting as much will be eaten.
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Oh, can be pretty common usage. My hometown has two parts called “old town” and “new town” which were both established in the 13th century, albeit one of them slightly earlier than the other…
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I’d say yes, definitively, just by looking at the death toll for each mode of transport. In most jurisdictions, a driver’s license is so much easier to obtain than a license to drive a train or to steer a ship or an airplane. Car drivers are really much more negligent than train drivers, or pilots.
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Here in the US, four-way stop signs are almost a religion, it seems. My trip to the UK has made me hate them. I’m not sure which is worse - putting them on major arterial streets (very common in Chicago), or out in the boonies, on rural intersections with little traffic, Every. Fucking. Mile.
I’ve encountered them both.
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Yeah this looks like a normal Australian intersection to me. We have the flat land and open spaces to use 90 degree intersections in most places. You stop at the stop sign. Thats how it works.
Problem’s that isn’t a 90 degree intersection. Covers it in the video, but the angle means that the intersecting car is actually behind the cyclist and out of their field of view.
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I was being a little cheeky.
This is “New Road” near Bickleigh in South Devon which I take to work (when that was something we did) every morning.
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It’s not that I haven’t seen people behave correctly at 4-ways. And your are right that eye contact is key if things get confused. That’s another reason why my example intersection is so bad-- drivers are too far apart to make good eye contact, and there are too many drivers to pay attention to. In your example eye contact helps a great deal. But even eye contact won’t help if people are trying to ‘be polite’ instead of just waiting for their turn and taking it. I have seen drivers at 4-way stops wave another driver ahead even when it was time for neither to go! Too many drivers just wing it at 4-ways.
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We don’t have four way stop signs here in Australia and I doubt we could cope if we did. We are supposed to fall back to giving way to the right. This is how roundabouts work. But if traffic signals fail then nobody does that. They seem to wait a bit then try to push through slowly. I think it is better if you have a clear priority set up.
On my bike commute one critical intersection has failed signals. I took it carefully but the driver behind me went absolutely psycho at me. Constantly creeping forward at me, blowing his horn. Yelling and screaming. It got the the point where I couldn’t concentrate on the traffic at all.
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I’ve seen every kind of wrong behaviour at all-way* stops, but that’s true of every other traffic situation. Unless some asshole is blasting through without stopping, I just maintain my Zen-like calm. 
All-way stops work in a fairly narrow range of traffic volume and speeds. The intersection in your example would be a candidate for proper traffic lights, at least in Canada (I don’t know your location).
*We call them “all-way” now, so the city doesn’t have to keep an inventory of “3-way”, “4-way”, “5-way” etc. signs.
It’s a matter of familiarity. I like roundabouts, but I don’t have day-to-day experience with them and I’m sure I don’t get all the finer points.
The rule here is that if traffic lights fail, then treat the intersection as an all-way stop. Since drivers are mostly familiar with that it works fairly well, except for those few who fear they are trapped there forever and panic at the prospect of starving to death.
When I look at Tom Scott and try to guess his age, I become deeply confused.
