Annoying Intersection.

"Rainbow" (rainbeaux) 11/02/2015 at 08:19 • Filed to: None

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Here we have a T-intersection with the stop sign in the wrong place. This is a single road with a service road branching off on a sharp corner. However, the road is treated like it’s intersecting itself; If you’re heading westbound, you stop. If you’re heading eastbound, you don’t. If you’re a service vehicle leaving the gated and rarely used service road, you also stop. So eastbound traffic always has the right-of-way, creating a sort of shield for westbound traffic. The only time it’s necessary to stop is if a service vehicle is leaving the service road, heading west, and there are no eastbound cars coming. I’m no infrastructure expert, but I believe that kind of extremely specific circumstance calls for a yield sign more than anything.

Bad Idea Hat > Rainbow 11/02/2015 at 08:25

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If this is a Rorschach test, all I see is Indianapolis/Arnage.

jariten1781 > Rainbow 11/02/2015 at 08:34

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We have a similar intersection on my route home from work. It’s that way because of inertia. When I first started driving the route the gated road (which also has a couple houses before the gate) was a private, but open to the public, through road. It was needed then, saw a car there at least a couple times a week. The industrial park got sick of, once GPS became more common, people cutting through and gated it off. Now there’s almost no traffic from the private road (seriously, I drive through it every day and I think I’ve seen one car in the last 3 years at the intersection simultaneously with me) but they left the sign up.

Humorously, the cops love to sit behind bushes on the private road prior to the gate and just pick up stop sign runners all day long. About 30% of people don’t even bother slowing for the sign, 50% roll it, and only ~20% do a full-ish stop.

ttyymmnn > Rainbow 11/02/2015 at 08:47

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Eric @ opposite-lock.com > Rainbow 11/02/2015 at 09:10

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This is for safety and probably one of the few places a stop or yield sign are warranted where it isn’t an intersection.

The reason there's one on the inside of the corner is because you can't see someone coming the other way and you could miss that corner if you're not going pretty slow. If you blow that corner wide, you'll hit someone. If you miss the corner entirely, you might wrap yourself around a tree.

RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht > ttyymmnn 11/02/2015 at 09:20

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Somewhat true, but going the other way, that’s the staging area for the drag strip/runway.

RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht > Rainbow 11/02/2015 at 09:30

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I’m betting that at one time the service road wasn’t gated. Even knowing that a yield would be appropriate for right turns if anything, there was probably a time in the past at which left turns from the signed part took place often enough (or could) and that traffic came from the service road in enough quantity that having them stop for that was best.

Basically, it bears the marks of once having been a rational road design (completed or not) that planners then emfuckened by directing the main route around.

RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht > Rainbow 11/02/2015 at 09:52

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Further in the “planners screwed up something that was fine for arbitrary reasons”: behold the following Z-shaped kink that was put in a road for golf course tee point and stupid sign reasons:

Note also the bozodry of what happened to Oconeechee at some point. In case you’re wondering if just carrying through onto S. Oconeechee would serve the same purposes as driving on Hiawassee - no. More hills, dead ends into a cross road, and it’s a much more blind road in general. (This is on my way to work.)