Comment by Ensorceled
5 days ago
This is just not true.
In Toronto for instance, the majority of pedestrian deaths are caused by impaired/distracted drivers with a significant portion of failure to yield by left turning drivers at major, light controlled intersections.
There isn't even a category for "four way stop" pedestrian fatalities.
Speed is nearly everything and controlling (ie. reducing) speed should be the primary way to influence fatality rates.
Having lived in both Toronto and SF, both cities with 4-way stop and controlled lights intersections.
I'll take 4-way stop any day since speeds are lower. Much better to get hit by a car at near zero speed than a right or left turning car at higher speed. Which is probably why Toronto doesn't have a category for four way stop fatalities.
(The worst are SF's 2-way stops at intersections between equally-sized roads that show up randomly throughout Sunset. Worst of both worlds.)
> I'll take 4-way stop any day since speeds are lower.
Exactly. People are, at worst, doing a "rolling stop" so they are still only going a few kph when they "didn't see" you.
A municipality could (and should) add speed bumps or other traffic-calming measures even at the approach the light-controlled crossing where pedestrians are often present.
> (The worst are SF's 2-way stops at intersections between equally-sized roads that show up randomly throughout Sunset. Worst of both worlds.)
As a cyclist, I've been yelled at by drivers for not stopping at that type of intersection, where they have a stop sign and I don't. People are working off of their personal version of the rules of the road, where they are always right.
> (The worst are SF's 2-way stops at intersections between equally-sized roads that show up randomly throughout Sunset. Worst of both worlds.)
If you think that's bad, Seattle has 0-way stops at intersections in residential. AFAIK, the rule is if you have a stop sign, you must stop; if you don't have a stop sign and other directions do, you have right of way and should proceed if safe; if you don't have a stop sign and neither does anyone else, treat it as an all-way stop. But from my observations, common behavior is to make it through the intersection about half way before realizing there are no stop signs and then just continue through because what else can you do at that point?
Here's a particularly challenging example: https://maps.app.goo.gl/gmuFk8jbo4GMJ1Ru7 where five roads come together with no signage.
What you are describing has a major sampling bias: most pedestrian fatalities will be at large intersections with many lanes crossing each other. Those intersections are on busy streets where drivers are going fast and where there are an insane number of conflict points. Yes, they're invariably controlled by a signal, but that's because a four-way stop is totally out of the question. The signal didn't cause the fatalities, it was necessary to install it because of the same factors that lead to fatalities.
Using that data doesn't remotely begin to predict what happens when you take a small four-way stop and add a signal to control it. Adding a signal does not create new conflict points, it does not increase the speed limit on the road, all it does is control the intersection in a more aggressive way.
> What you are describing has a major sampling bias: most pedestrian fatalities will be at large intersections with many lanes crossing each other. Those intersections are on busy streets where drivers are going fast and where there are an insane number of conflict points.
That's not what the point plot of the Toronto data shows. Many of our fatalities are on city streets with 40 or 50 km/h speed limits.
Anyway, I was responding to the OP who was claiming that they would rather deal with stop lights than 4 way stops. There is nothing that shows that 4 way stops are dangerous at all, let alone more dangerous than light controlled stops in similar situations.