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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   34870 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 9, 2025

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these exist to regulate traffic and force you to look at potentially dangerous intersections, so lean on stopping unless you have good reason not to.

The thing is that yield sign exists. It is pointless to have both stop and yield in the same logical system. Heavy traffic and yield will force you to stop. With light traffic stop is pointless.

Places with extremely poor visibility are valid reason for stop signs.

I've been in mountainous terrain that's misleading enough to put to bed the necessity of stop signs existing, sometimes a full stop is actually necessary, under penalty of death.

Now as to whether people overuse them because they feel they are safer or something, I guess that depends where you are. Where I come from politicians are very fond of roundabouts because they allow for a plausibly deniable way to fund local construction cartels, so I'm not closed to the idea that traffic signage can be made stupid for whatever reason.

With light enough traffic and decent enough drivers I'd go as far as to say that signage can be almost totally unnecessary. But that's not the environment people have in mind when they lay the signs.

My parents visited China where stop lights are all yields. They were happy to return to Albuquerque driving.

I've been to China plenty. Their driving norms are hard to take. Someone on a scooter making an illegal left hand turn starting from the right side of the road through multiple lanes of traffic. I'm cringing watch him weave through cars going both ways.

City busses don't slow down for or avoid pedestrians. You need to proactively get out of the bus's way. I've seen a few people almost get hit by busses. They don't have our very American understanding of pedestrian right of way.

People driving with no seat belt and pulling it across their body as they approach the seat belt cameras, then letting it go when past the cameras. More effort than just wearing a seat belt.

Taxi drivers aren't the person on the taxi license. One was clearly underaged and smoking.

It sounds like all of Latin America- this is probably pretty standard for developing countries.

Yeah, my coworkers say the same thing about driving in India.

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