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Terminal Entropy posted:What's this yield you speak of? Oh those triangle signs? They mean just keep going and just to be aware someone is about to move over but it's you option to just keep driving, right? If you're facing a yield sign, it means that you must stop only if there's traffic coming from the intersecting direction. In North America, all cases where a certain road has priority have yield signs indicating this on intersecting roads. A completely unsigned intersection means that all roads have equal priority (following 4-way stop rules) but there's no need to stop if the way is clear. These are generally only seen in low-speed residential areas, for obvious reasons.
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Apr 10, 2013 21:52
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PT6A posted:No, our drivers are just painfully loving stupid. Even yield signs are dangerous because you can never assume the person ahead of you is going to go just because there's no traffic and the light is green anyway. So drive at a safer distance then? Unless you're concerned about people rear-ending you.
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Apr 10, 2013 21:55
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PT6A posted:If you're facing a yield sign, it means that you must stop only if there's traffic coming from the intersecting direction. In North America, all cases where a certain road has priority have yield signs indicating this on intersecting roads. A completely unsigned intersection means that all roads have equal priority (following 4-way stop rules) but there's no need to stop if the way is clear. These are generally only seen in low-speed residential areas, for obvious reasons. I know exactly what they are, but everyone else where I live dosen't, which was my point with that as it would be worse off to just rely on nothing but yield signs. Any time I driving down an I-10 off-ramp, it is 50/50 that car on the frontage road will actually yield.
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Apr 10, 2013 22:00
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PT6A posted:Now, the real reason I came here: I read a report on the news today that apparently pedestrian count-down timers are increasing pedestrian safety but also causing more car accidents in the intersection because cars are using the pedestrian countdowns to know when they need to speed up, or maybe stop (note: in many cases, the pedestrian signal and traffic signal are on different cycles). Now, having been to countries where they have countdown timers on traffic lights (both red and green): why don't we just add those? You'll have fewer people accidentally running yellow lights, you'll know when to put your car in gear at a red light, etc. Yet for some reason, I haven't ever seen one in North America. What are your thoughts on the use of countdowns for pedestrians, traffic lights, or both? I asked cichlidae the same thing, and was told that it has to do with preemption. What happens when you have 20 seconds of green left, and then the light suddenly turns yellow because of an ambulance coming? The countdown encourages complacency and can lead to accidents.
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Apr 10, 2013 22:44
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Volmarias posted:I asked cichlidae the same thing, and was told that it has to do with preemption. What happens when you have 20 seconds of green left, and then the light suddenly turns yellow because of an ambulance coming? The countdown encourages complacency and can lead to accidents. Not just pre-emption, but any time the signals aren't pretimed. You could get around it with countdowns that go at nonlinear rates, but then you'd probably just confuse people more. I'd rather just have the English/German combo yellow-red when the signal's about to change over.
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Apr 11, 2013 00:06
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Mandalay posted:This already exists in LA - see the Metro Rapid lines (numbered route 7XX):
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Apr 11, 2013 00:48
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Baronjutter posted:Speaking of bus priority systems... And it works well, too. Varance fucked around with this message at 13:15 on Apr 11, 2013 |
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Apr 11, 2013 00:55
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Volmarias posted:I asked cichlidae the same thing, and was told that it has to do with preemption. What happens when you have 20 seconds of green left, and then the light suddenly turns yellow because of an ambulance coming? The countdown encourages complacency and can lead to accidents. That's a decent point to a degree, but if an emergency vehicle has lights and siren on, why does the light itself need to change? The only places I've seen it happen, it fucks up the entire intersection for a whole cycle, while the emergency vehicle could've passed safely through the intersection in 10 seconds otherwise? Not every intersection is preempted by emergency vehicles anyway, so it remains important that people slow down if they hear a siren when approaching an intersection. There's always going to be imperfect circumstances, but frankly I'd rather have a warning rather than having a dodgy situation where I have to consider blowing a yellow light in a fraction of a second as it changes. I can't speak about what it's like elsewhere, but in Havana drivers were certainly less likely to run a yellow based on the countdown rather than a quick switch to a yellow light -- now, this could've been because of the comparatively severe consequences of getting caught running a yellow light, or the lack of discretion given to drivers who do run a yellow light when they could clearly see the light was about to change, but either way I think it has value. Jonnty posted:So drive at a safer distance then? Unless you're concerned about people rear-ending you. Well, I know that now. Still, if people are stopping at yield signs when they don't need to, it really does defeat the purpose of yield signs. If I, the vehicle behind you, can see there's no traffic, then why in gently caress's name are you stopping? I've quit tilting at that particular windmill, though, and I now dutifully stop until I'm sure the other person will go, which makes things worse because I haven't been looking at the cross-traffic in the meantime to determine if my way will be clear.
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Apr 11, 2013 06:48
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PT6A posted:That's a decent point to a degree, but if an emergency vehicle has lights and siren on, why does the light itself need to change? The only places I've seen it happen, it fucks up the entire intersection for a whole cycle, while the emergency vehicle could've passed safely through the intersection in 10 seconds otherwise? Not every intersection is preempted by emergency vehicles anyway, so it remains important that people slow down if they hear a siren when approaching an intersection. Emergency vehicles have to slow down to ~30kph when going through an intersection with clear sight distance, even slower when it's busy or the sight line is restricted. Those precious seconds can easily be the difference between life and death. Most people can't tell where a siren is coming from, and many will be listening to loud music or too distracted to look for its source. We only install EVPS on fire runs, anyway; it's not like they're at every signal. Having a countdown on green wouldn't work at any actuated signal; once the green's maxed out, it will change to yellow as soon as a car pulls onto a detector for a conflicting phase. The signal has no way to see the future, so it can't tell when to change from "all the time in the world" to "oh poo poo stop now." PT6A posted:There's always going to be imperfect circumstances, but frankly I'd rather have a warning rather than having a dodgy situation where I have to consider blowing a yellow light in a fraction of a second as it changes. I can't speak about what it's like elsewhere, but in Havana drivers were certainly less likely to run a yellow based on the countdown rather than a quick switch to a yellow light -- now, this could've been because of the comparatively severe consequences of getting caught running a yellow light, or the lack of discretion given to drivers who do run a yellow light when they could clearly see the light was about to change, but either way I think it has value. The best way to do it is to set all yellow times to 3 seconds, and extend the red clearance to give drivers enough time to get through the intersection before the next car enters it, even in the worst situations. If cops are ticketing people for running a fresh red, well, there's nothing I can do about that, but it's absolutely the wrong approach if they want to avoid accidents.
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Apr 11, 2013 11:40
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PT6A posted:That's a decent point to a degree, but if an emergency vehicle has lights and siren on, why does the light itself need to change? The only places I've seen it happen, it fucks up the entire intersection for a whole cycle, while the emergency vehicle could've passed safely through the intersection in 10 seconds otherwise? Not every intersection is preempted by emergency vehicles anyway, so it remains important that people slow down if they hear a siren when approaching an intersection. There's always going to be imperfect circumstances, but frankly I'd rather have a warning rather than having a dodgy situation where I have to consider blowing a yellow light in a fraction of a second as it changes. I can't speak about what it's like elsewhere, but in Havana drivers were certainly less likely to run a yellow based on the countdown rather than a quick switch to a yellow light -- now, this could've been because of the comparatively severe consequences of getting caught running a yellow light, or the lack of discretion given to drivers who do run a yellow light when they could clearly see the light was about to change, but either way I think it has value.
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Apr 11, 2013 17:17
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James The 1st posted:The light has to change because sometimes there are a lot a cars stopped at the red, making it impossible to get through without a green. Also even with flashing lights and sirens etc, it's always going to be safer going through a green light than a red one.
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Apr 11, 2013 17:58
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Install Gentoo posted:I'm not seeing what the point of the right of way signs are, in America an intersection like that would generally have no signage at all on the higher priority road. Unless one road is an arterial, there is no need for any signs at all. Americans would (in some states?) treat it as a four-way stop, while most Europeans follow the Vienna convention and thus the Priority to the right rule. The thing is, European arterials are not always very obvious, so lawmakers felt a need to signpost them. That's the right-of-way sign, which is tiny and looks like this:  The driver knows he doesn't have to yield to vehicles coming from his right. That driver, in turn, would probably find a yield sign at the crossroads. Sounds simple, right? Of course, most people don't pay attention to whether the road is the signposted as arterial, so you get lots of situations where a driver is going down a non-arterial-road that looks kinda wider than the other roads and assumes it's an arterial. In the town where I grew up, the right-hand rule was obeyed religiously, so such behavior would sometimes result in accidents. Hippie Hedgehog fucked around with this message at 18:16 on Apr 11, 2013 |
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Apr 11, 2013 18:11
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Saw this on an economics blog, relevant to a recent convo here: http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2013/04/inform-pedestrians-not-drivers.htmlquote:Most empirical studies on the role of information in markets analyze policies that reduce asymmetries in the information that market participants possess, often suggesting that the policies improve welfare. We exploit the introduction of pedestrian countdown signals – timers that indicate when traffic lights will change – to evaluate a policy that increases the information that all market participants possess. We find that although countdown signals reduce the number of pedestrians struck by automobiles, they increase the number of collisions between automobiles. We also find that countdown signals caused more collisions overall. The findings imply welfare gains can be attained by revealing the information to pedestrians and hiding it from drivers. We conclude that policies which increase asymmetries in information can improve welfare.
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Apr 12, 2013 18:00
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cheese-cube posted:
That traffic light stop sign is only used in NSW. Although it's in the road rules in each state, no other state has approved it. What it requires is that if the traffic lights at an intersection are not working, either black or flashing orange, you must stop at the stop line and give way to traffic. Only one direction has the stop sign, the other direction gets priority. http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/sa/consol_reg/arr210/s63.html
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Apr 12, 2013 18:13
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DogGunn posted:What it requires is that if the traffic lights at an intersection are not working, either black or flashing orange, you must stop at the stop line and give way to traffic. What other situation could possibly exist than "if the traffic light is out everyone stops and yields to traffic"?
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Apr 13, 2013 02:03
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I'm not sure how it's taught elsewhere, but here in Belgium we have to learn the hierarchy of traffic signals, the top having a higher priority to obey:
Personally saying, I's be confused at what that sign is trying to convey, while it would be much clearer to simply have traffic lights with a stop sign underneath, which is what they generally do here.
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Apr 13, 2013 11:25
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Chemmy posted:What other situation could possibly exist than "if the traffic light is out everyone stops and yields to traffic"?
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Apr 13, 2013 13:55
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Fragrag posted:I'm not sure how it's taught elsewhere, but here in Belgium we have to learn the hierarchy of traffic signals, the top having a higher priority to obey: Some places here have a fold-up STOP sign on signal approaches. Have a look. Only downside is you need someone to go out and flip the sign down, which isn't too hard to do when you're at an airport that's typically swarming with cops.
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Apr 13, 2013 14:01
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We have fold down signs in most major intersections around here.
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Apr 13, 2013 17:28
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PT6A posted:What I remember about Europe was that they have many fewer lights and stop signs than North America. There's plenty of places in North America where we have traffic lights, yet it's incredibly safe to turn into the curb lane on red (right on red, or left on red on certain intersections of one-way streets) because traffic is so light for the majority of the day. Cichlidae posted:We only install EVPS on fire runs, anyway; it's not like they're at every signal.
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Apr 13, 2013 21:24
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GWBBQ posted:In the US, getting a driver's license is basically a matter of not being legally blind, maybe taking an 8 hour class on drug and alcohol impairment, and managing to not hit anyone or run any red lights while the instructor is in the car for your test. My brother got his license 3 or 4 years ago and when he pulled into the parking space at the end of the test, he was told that he could get out and check and try again two more times if he needed to without pentaly. I did behind the wheel student driver in high school, about 2 or 3 times for at most 2 hours each. I was able to take all the time I needed for parallel parking and got a voucher at the end of the whole deal that got me past any of the driving test stuff.
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Apr 13, 2013 21:34
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GWBBQ posted:That's only for state roads, right? In Fairfield an Stamford, I can think of two approaches to lights that don't have preemption devices on them, and one of those is coming out of a garage. Official DOT policy is that EVPS is only for fire trucks, but off-label use for cops/ambulances is pretty common. In any case, the state pays for the system's installation, but the town has to pay to maintain it. There's nothing stopping them from installing one at their own cost on any town road.
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Apr 13, 2013 21:51
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GWBBQ posted:In the US, getting a driver's license is basically a matter of not being legally blind
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Apr 13, 2013 22:06
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Cichlidae posted:Official DOT policy is that EVPS is only for fire trucks, but off-label use for cops/ambulances is pretty common. In any case, the state pays for the system's installation, but the town has to pay to maintain it. There's nothing stopping them from installing one at their own cost on any town road.
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Apr 15, 2013 03:38
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GWBBQ posted:Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure the white strobes on top of Stamford school buses are for signal preemption. They don't flash quite as fast as the ones on emergency vehicles, but they're quite bright and in the middle of the roof where other vehicles wouldn't be able to see them well. There are two frequencies for pre-emption. One's something like 14.028 Hz, and I don't remember the other, but they're available on manufacturer websites. One of my coworkers tried to program the flash on his phone to mimic a pre-emption call, but it's much more complicated than he'd imagined.
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Apr 15, 2013 04:00
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Cichlidae, what is your opinion on a project like this? http://www.bizjournals.com/denver/news/2013/04/10/cdot-proposes-lowering-two-miles-of.html?page=all The I-70 viaduct there is an eyesore and needs to be replaced with it being ~60 years old. Here is the area now: https://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&so...04&z=15&iwloc=A One of the original plans was to tear it all down and reroute the I-70 traffic along I-76 and I-270 through that part of Denver.
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Apr 15, 2013 04:41
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Cichlidae, I moved from Cincinnati to Pittsburgh a few years and wanted to get your professional opinion on this. Is Pittsburgh's infrastructure truly a hellish unfixable nightmare? If I look up some place to go around town, 20 miles might as well be a million. Between all the hosed up interchanges, merges, bridges, tunnels and horrible drivers, I find myself opting to let a native drive or staying home. I know the geography and city's history all contribute to the issues, but at this point, I don't see anything short if somehow starting over again fixing it. Pittsburgh has to be a massive case study in 'what not do with roads' right. I know it's hometown bias after driving Cincy streets for so long, but I could anywhere in the greater metro area in 20 minutes or so. Is the secret the 275 loop in Cincinnati?
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Apr 15, 2013 05:39
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hoju22 posted:Cichlidae, I moved from Cincinnati to Pittsburgh a few years and wanted to get your professional opinion on this.
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Apr 15, 2013 06:17
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Are these mythical great European drivers really true? I know the licensing is different but does it really make a practical difference?
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Apr 15, 2013 13:05
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To the extent of my very limited experience US drivers are pretty well disciplined and courteous compared to a lot of NW-European drivers. Nevertheless, I'd love to believe that my 30+ hours of mandatory driving lessons made me start out as a better driver than someone who did a questionnaire. After having driven around in the UAE, most other countries' drivers would look a lot better though.
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Apr 15, 2013 13:35
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smackfu posted:Are these mythical great European drivers really true? I know the licensing is different but does it really make a practical difference? It really varies from country to country. The best description I've heard of Italian drivers comes from author Bill Bryson: "The Italians park the exact same way I would if I had just spilled a beaker of sulfuric acid on my lap." The Brits, though, are similar to what I experience in Illinois--largely fine, some major idiots
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Apr 15, 2013 14:26
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hoju22 posted:Is Pittsburgh's infrastructure truly a hellish unfixable nightmare? If I look up some place to go around town, 20 miles might as well be a million. Between all the hosed up interchanges, merges, bridges, tunnels and horrible drivers, I find myself opting to let a native drive or staying home. I know the geography and city's history all contribute to the issues, but at this point, I don't see anything short if somehow starting over again fixing it. Pittsburgh has to be a massive case study in 'what not do with roads' right. Weirdness like stopsigns on freeway on-ramps is mainly a result of the geography, but it exists in many places other than Pittsburgh (usually in the form of traffic lights, see Las Vegas for example). I would guess that, if you asked 10 people how to get from A to B, you would get at least 5 different answers. Just learn a few way points around the city and how to get there, and navigate off of those. For example, if you can get from your home to downtown, Squirrel Hill, Monroeville, Fox Chapel and the South Side, you can probably get just about anywhere within a few minutes from the closest of those places. As far as fixing it, that doesn't seem likely. That isn't to say that things aren't being done, but some of the problems are related to streets being built before cars really existed, ridiculous geography leading to choke points around tunnels and bridges, and seemingly random city layout. That being said, there are enough major roads that connect distant regions (Penn Ave, 5th Ave, Forbes, Ardmore, Carson St, I376) that most of the weirdness is bypassed until you're almost to your destination. SLOSifl fucked around with this message at 15:48 on Apr 15, 2013 |
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Apr 15, 2013 15:40
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Koesj posted:To the extent of my very limited experience US drivers are pretty well disciplined and courteous compared to a lot of NW-European drivers. Nevertheless, I'd love to believe that my 30+ hours of mandatory driving lessons made me start out as a better driver than someone who did a questionnaire. A really good % of students take driver's ed in high school, but they don't get into that either.
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Apr 15, 2013 22:18
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will_colorado posted:Cichlidae, what is your opinion on a project like this? Decked highways are really a nightmare for maintenance and protection of traffic, especially as they age. Pretty much anything would be better than the existing condition. Dropping the freeway into a trench and building atop it isn't a sure-fire way to reduce its impacts, but it certainly is less disruptive to the community. The biggest issue is that it'd be almost impossible to widen further once it's been buried. Colorado's one of the fastest-growing states, so they'd better build in plenty of extra capacity if they don't want an expensive bottleneck in 20 years. hoju22 posted:Cichlidae, I moved from Cincinnati to Pittsburgh a few years and wanted to get your professional opinion on this. I haven't been to either city, so I really couldn't say. Pittsburgh's in some rough terrain, densely developed, and split by rivers. There was pretty much no way it was going to end up with a functional freeway network. If it makes you feel better, though, there are plenty of cities that're even worse. grover posted:It's not that US drivers don't get education- they just usually get it from parents, and not through professional instructors. So while they learn to drive, they often learn bad habits and don't learn real car control like you'd get from classes that go on the skidpad and all. Driving is a much bigger responsibility overseas, too; license and insurance fees are over a thousand Euro in Germany, and I'm pretty sure France is up there, as well. Coupled with the better mass transit, driving isn't seen as something you need to learn how to do at age 16 there.
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Apr 15, 2013 23:27
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Cichlidae posted:Driving is a much bigger responsibility overseas, too; license and insurance fees are over a thousand Euro in Germany, and I'm pretty sure France is up there, as well. Coupled with the better mass transit, driving isn't seen as something you need to learn how to do at age 16 there.
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Apr 16, 2013 04:09
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Arizona only cost about $40 total split between permit and license. We also don't have to renew until turning 65. Cichlidae, how common is it for states to use gas taxes for road funds? Arizona does it and I think I remember one other state/country get mentioned that did the same.
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Apr 16, 2013 06:24
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Terminal Entropy posted:Arizona only cost about $40 total split between permit and license. We also don't have to renew until turning 65. Every state is supposed to; that's what gas taxes are for. I know that Connecticut and Rhode Island get their gas tax siphoned off into the state General Fund, which seems to happen to almost any funding source, sadly. This means that hardly any of it goes to the DOT.
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Apr 16, 2013 12:11
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Until the mid 90s, fuel taxes were 80-90% of municipal infrastructure (i.e. road work) funding. Now they're down to about 40-60% and falling, many munis report 70% shortfalls. KCMO for example has more highway lane miles per capita than anyone, and more road miles per capita than everyone except LA and OKC, but only makes 50-60% of the FHWA's recommended disbursements, leaving the city more than $1B in unfunded infrastructure liabilities. (In MO, a pavement moves from an asset to a liability at 80% initial condition.)Cichlidae posted:I know that Connecticut and Rhode Island get their gas tax siphoned off into the state General Fund, which seems to happen to almost any funding source, sadly. This means that hardly any of it goes to the DOT. That's not the only problem - the Federal allocation hasn't been raised since the mid '90s, and it's a fixed cents-per-gallon, which means that rising fuel prices decrease fuel tax revenues because as gas prices rise, people buy less; vehicles are approximately twice as efficient on average than when fuel taxes were last raised, and will be twice as efficient again by 2030 due to CAFE standard increases; driverless vehicles are 50-90% more fuel efficient on top of all of those other efficiency increases; and electric vehicles don't pay fuel taxes, period. In short, fuel taxes for transportation funding were once barely adequate, now they are not only completely inadequate but unable to be adequate despite any amount of political wrangling. The way forward is user fees, which is how every other industry in the world is funded! You pay for what you use, no more, no less, it's that f'ing simple. Chaos Motor fucked around with this message at 15:10 on Apr 16, 2013 |
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Apr 16, 2013 15:05
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Chaos Motor posted:In short, fuel taxes for transportation funding were once barely adequate, now they are not only completely inadequate but unable to be adequate despite any amount of political wrangling. The way forward is user fees, which is how every other industry in the world is funded! You pay for what you use, no more, no less, it's that f'ing simple. Well, that, or do what socialist Scandinavia does: use whatever money the government has lying around (which is a lot since we tax the poo poo out of everything). It's not a law of nature that fuel taxes go to infrastructure, that's just a convenient way to make fuel taxes feel less painful to drivers. On the other hand, we don't let users pay the full price of education, healthcare or a number of other critical infrastructures in society. (Roads are an industry? Not in my country!) Edit: My hometown introduced user fees ("congestion tax") on roads to finance new construction. After a public outrage, it looks like there's going to be a referendum to recall the fees...
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Apr 16, 2013 16:47
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Hippie Hedgehog posted:Well, that, or do what socialist Scandinavia does: use whatever money the government has lying around (which is a lot since we tax the poo poo out of everything). It's not a law of nature that fuel taxes go to infrastructure, that's just a convenient way to make fuel taxes feel less painful to drivers. I'd rather not, taxes don't make anything cheaper, they just hide the expenses from you, which encourages irresponsible, and therefore expensive, behaviors, because you're not seeing how much it costs. In the USA, government money is generally spent on business subsidies that drive up prices, or warfare, and we've go enough of each of those, we really don't need more. quote:On the other hand, we don't let users pay the full price of education, healthcare or a number of other critical infrastructures in society. (Roads are an industry? Not in my country!) Uhhh, people are paying the full price, just through a mechanism that obscures costs. No thanks! I'd rather see the bill so that I can take steps to minimize that bill, instead of tossing it off on a bureaucrat who will make special deals with his friends to drive up the prices and hide the cost increases behind taxes. Let me know what it costs, so I can pay what it costs, and stop taxing me, you don't have a right to garnish my wages to pay for pet projects that I don't want and don't benefit me. User fees are the right way to pay for things, it works in literally every single industry on Earth, and they will work for infrastructure too, if you let them. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Apr 16, 2013 17:50
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