European Thought of Traffic Sign Removal

[Robert]

I know Slashdot is not the typical thing to be posting around here, but...

science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/11/19/2033206&from=rss

... this idea scares me. Just picture even a simple, highly-visible four-way intersection where no direction has to stop. A "T-Bone" collision is one of the most dangerous types of accidents... because there's not much anything like seat belts can do if you collapse inward from the side. And, as my brother put it, "There are signs for a reason. Even animals have warning signs on there." (E.g. Black/Yellow on bees, etc.)

[Admin]

*reads*

Oh holy hell it just HAD to be another hare-brained idea from my dumb country...

If it DOES work, however, all the more power to them. In the meantime, I'm glad it's not been instated in Amsterdam yet.

[SpadeRunner Cin]

So on that street you can go 100+ miles an hour, AND park anywhere and get away with it because theirs nothing saying you cant?

If that happens I think I'll stay indoors forever.

[Kulock]

Don't worry, all people have good intentions and courtesy- *run over by a person talking on a cellphone as they speed toward a sale on bath towels*

[rogerfromimp]

Same as communism, the plan sounds perfect.. in theory..

For practical use they make one fatal mistake, as Kulock said. They assume everyone has good intentions and is able to make correct decisions (what about the elderly, or indeed, cell phone maniacs, ruthless youths, little children and so on.)

[Sofox]

Guys if you check the original article: www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,448747,00.html you'll see they've already been doing it in Drachten in the Netherlands and since it started road accidents have declined dramatically.

Honestly, there's a sort of sense to it. Instead of a bunch of road regulations that you're expected to understand, you're instead given the general sense of "respect other people on the road and take responsibility for your driving." Of course, a good conscientious society is a good place to start off, but I'd imagine it's easier for someone to gain the general philosophy of how to drive and implement it rather then arbitrarily obeying a set of rules. Not to say this would instantly work in all cities, but it is still and interesting approach to pursue.

[Epon]

I'm sorry, but stopping at a stop sign doesn't require a high IQ level. It's there not for safety, but for legal issues. When someone gets T-Boned, how will it hold up in court? One person's word against another's? Silly.

[Evan]

I can imagine it working in Europe, but over here, no fucking way.

[Robert]

sofox said:

Of course, a good conscientious society is a good place to start off, but I'd imagine it's easier for someone to gain the general philosophy of how to drive and implement it rather then arbitrarily obeying a set of rules. Not to say this would instantly work in all cities, but it is still and interesting approach to pursue.

Interesting perhaps... like communism: all people are equal, everyone gets their equal share of everything. In other words, this kind of sounds like an ideal situation until it is actually put into practice. Okay, it doesn't count so much for Anytown, USA with population 100. But let's go into I-35 outside of Minneapolis / St. Paul, where there's four lanes of bumper-to-bumper traffic moving in and out fast, and then the actual split between the sister cities occurs. That entire road could not possibly work the way it does without lane divisions. For the sheer amount of people that road may be moving, the rules this country uses are the only thing keeping order.

And conscientious still applies even in the rules system; continuing on I-35, there may be up to five cars that are attempting to merge onto it. People back off a little to let them in, and traffic continues flowing very quickly without halting anyone.

epon said:

It's there not for safety, but for legal issues. When someone gets T-Boned, how will it hold up in court? One person's word against another's? Silly.

This is true too. A "ruleless" driving system would severely impair the ability to find out where the responsibilty lies when things go wrong. Take the four-way intersection with only one intersecting street having stop signs, with the stop-sign oriented street blocked from view of the cross-traffic, a very common situation. If we have an accident where one car has plowed into the side of the other, almost always the fault can be found at the one driver having blew through the stop sign carelessly. The other driver is most likely not at fault at all; this situation, even if the stop-sign-blower did it completely accidentally, was something the other driver simply could not prepare for.



I think what it really comes down to is, if you have areas of sparse population and/or cars, you might be able to get away with this OK. But a country like the US could not possibly stand up to it. A vague intersection actually causes us a great deal of heartache and traffic backups. Now, perhaps we could use fewer traffic signals if we had more yield/merge type situations on major arteries. That might improve traffic. But I wouldn't drop the systems of lanes and speed control.

[NeroKid]

in europe, sign obeys you!