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I mean all stop signs. I have yet to see a single city where the vast majority of stop-sign-controlled intersections couldn’t have been better served with yield signs.

Get rid of the vast majority of stop signs, and you’ve eliminated a huge amount of the problem this law seeks to solve.




I can’t imagine any of the stop signs here in Los Angeles being able to be replaced by yield signs.

They are almost all 4 way stops, with regular traffic in all directions. If you made it an uncontrolled intersection, or added a yield sign, the road with the yield sign would never get a chance to go.

In fact, there are a number of places along my route to my daughters school where I take a slightly longer way to avoid the intersections without a 4 way stop because I would end up sitting forever trying to turn if I went to one of them.


> I can’t imagine any of the stop signs here in Los Angeles being able to be replaced by yield signs.

That's because the roads, as they currently are, were designed for stop signs. Removing those stop signs is going to usually involve changing the roads a bit too.


How would you even go about doing that? You would have to kick people out of houses.


You wouldn't necessarily need more space, but even if you did US streets are already so wide that you can generally apply road diets to them and still get better trafic flow out of them.


You may have identified some warranted stops. Congratulations! In my area, the vast majority of stop signs can be replaced by yield signs, to broad societal benefit.


Yeah, but the comment I replied to said:

> I have yet to see a single city where the vast majority of stop-sign-controlled intersections couldn’t have been better served with yield signs.

So I was giving an example of a city where that wasn’t the case. I never said all stop signs are necessary, I was only disputing the point that most stop signs in ALL cities aren’t necessary.


In cities where there are streets - collectors - arterials you can remove almost all stop signs because the streets see little traffic.

But cities like LA have grown so much that even if they had that at one point effectively every street is a parallel collector and so the traffic volumes are too high.

The “rolling stop” is just proof that most intersections could be unsigned, and then use stop and yield to alert to specifically dangerous ones.

If you rarely or never saw a stop sign, one appearing would be an awakening.


You could replace with a roundabout.


Is there data that you've read on this to back up your claims?

I know there's a push to replace stop lights and signs with traffic circles. But I haven't heard the same for residential stop signs. I've just read that they prefer to eliminate 4-ways stops because 3-ways are much safer..


> Is there data that you've read on this to back up your claims?

There’s plenty of it. If you want to start from the pollution angle, consider the pollution caused by a stop/start rather than steady-speed cruise through the intersection. Enormous difference.


> Is there data that you've read on this to back up your claims?

Many other countries get by with far fewer stop signs and have far fewer traffic fatalities. Not sure if there's a causative relationship there, but it doesn't seem to be hurting.


How are 3 way stops safer?


No cross traffic is the thinking, so the most dangerous situation - someone blowing through the stop sign at full speed - is less likely to be an issue, because it can only happen in on the road that's the top of the T, and since bottom of the T traffic always needs to stop, they are more likely to notice traffic that may blow through the sign.

If you look at modern American suburban streets, you'll see this idea in action. Most intersections are 3-way vs the grid layout common in older areas.


Maybe I haven't seen 'modern' suburban streets, because all the suburbs I know have 4 way stops


So they're asking for a redesign with 3-way intersections, not some weird setup where you remove one stop sign?


Because the mentality is to stop, look, and wait for it to be clear, rather than stop and immediately just go.

Stop and immediately go is particularly a problem for less visible road users like pedestrians and cyclists.


Not sure how that would work where I am from… there are so many cars, the one direction that didn’t have the stop sign would be constantly full and the other three directions would just sit there.


An intersection that busy should just be a traffic light though. All of these other measures are for managing flow at intersections where natural gaps exist and can be leveraged.


Or the speed reduced - you can handle a lot of traffic at an unsignaled intersection of both roads are slow enough.

It’s when there’s a huge speed differential and no signaling that it becomes a problem as traffic gets higher.


These are in residential neighborhoods, and stop signs help prevent people from speeding, as well.


You haven't been to Sherman Oaks.




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