No Stupid Questions

Reading more of these comments it's clear we need to invest heavily in biking and transit infrastructure so taking away some idiots drivers license doesn't damn them to poverty

One explanation could be that many American cities are designed in a grid shape, making many 4 way crossings of equally important roads.

European roads are more often like a tree structure with one road being the main one and with more 3 way intersections, and where the smaller roads have to yield.

Obviously both continents have both types, but due to the city design, USA has many more 4 way crossings.

This might be a stupid answer, but I genuinely think Americans couldn't handle that system. We already have problems with people not stopping properly at stop signs. If we had the "give way" system too many people would just ignore it and cause accidents.

I realize this is super pessimistic, but I think it's true. We have a handful of roundabouts and people always screw them up.

I don't think Americans are inherently dumber or anything, I just think our licensing exam is laughably easy. You literally just parallel park, then drive in a square where you encounter one traffic light, and one stop sign. Exam was over in 5 minutes. Here's your license.

Just different design philosophy.

EU uses the signs as traffic calming. US uses to determine right of way. Studies have shown that there are better ways, but how do you retrain all the drivers? It would be a financial nightmare and the transition would likely result in more accidents, so, status quo

My guess was just flawed design (see also low-density housing, traffic/parking problems, and lack of public transportation) and yeah, searching on YT gives a NotJustBikes video on the topic. Although it doesn't really have more specific to the USA than what I've said here.

Potentially car-centric design (because stop and go faster) is why they lean more heavily on it, especially with taller (and heavier) trucks/SUVs being more common.

First, traffic circles are rare here, and grid patterns more common, so we have many more simple intersections of roughly equivalent roads. This likely set a precedent where the default choice was simply to avoid trying to determine who should give way, and just tell everyone to stop and then follow a set of rules that were dependent on the moment. Fuel economy would not have been a concern at all.

If it doesn’t actively cause problems, even a sub optimal standard can still settle in. Then, once cultural inertia takes over, it can literally be dangerous to try to change ingrained driving habits, and even if it’s not strictly dangerous, in a large country with vast swathes where virtually everyone drives, simplifying the decision tree is important for traffic flow.

For instance, this is not directly related to stop-vs-give-way, but it’s illustrative of how standards become sticky even when there’s s better way. There is a very busy at-grade intersection near where i live that became infamous. It has a combination of having multiple lanes on each road, speed limits nearing the top of what’s allowed on “normal” roads (ie not a freeway/motorway), large numbers of young drivers, and large numbers of wealthier drivers. It became known, hyperbolically, as “the most dangerous and expensive intersection in the world” because of the large number of accidents that involved expensive cars, and it was a nightmare to navigate. The insurance companies and the traffic planners wanted to try to fix it.

So they did all their studies and spent millions to turn it from as signal-controlled intersection to a “Michigan Left.” Drivers were confused and angry and the lack of understanding meant that people hated it. They were confused, so there were still a good number of accidents, many of them at higher speed since drivers who did understand the concept would not be ready for someone turning against traffic. Many people simply avoided it, clogging nearby routes in a way that more than mooted the advantages of the new layout.

In the end, the government left the new infrastructure as an option, but reopened the old turn lanes and set the signals back. An objectively better layout in ideal situations was an utter failure when actually imposed on the American driving public. Using more stop signs than we “need” is similar in that people expect a certain behavior and driving habits are built around it, and switching to the English system would probably create as many problems as it solves, while also being expensive for whichever generation would have considered it.

A lot of people here are saying how we need to get rid of cars in cities, but my perspective is slightly different. That's all well and good, and ultimately what I want too, but I live in the country. There isn't public transport around me, and it's completely infeasible to have it running all over the countryside frequently enough to be useful.

What I want is a hybrid system, where I'd drive to a smaller town, leave the car there (preferably with free or cheap parking so that it doesn't make it more expensive to do this), then take public transport from there. Ultimately I think this is by far the best option, as it doesn't make life harder for people in the country, and it removes cars from the cities.

The problem with North America is that it is closed to trying new things because it believes that its way of doing things is better than the rest of the world.

For example, roundabouts could help with traffic flow and reduce accidents, as they have been proven to do in the rest of the world. But unfortunately, North American drivers are absolutely terrified of them, so cities will not implement them.

If there isn't a sign people assume they have the right of way. That's just how the roads work. I've even seen signs bellow the stop sign saying cross traffic does not stop. A "rolling stop" where you sort of look and slow down but don't actually stop can easily get you a ticket.

People still ignore stop signs or red lights often resulting in accidents.

That average has to have some really grotesque edge cases. What really SHOULD happen for a variety of reasons is city centers shouldn't be a place you commute to but that you also live in and all the changes that come with that, including having far less or no cars at all. Suburbia and cities designed for cars are the problems, self driving cars are a venture capital magnet looking for a problem to fix.

I think it comes down to litigation. Our country serves as a work program for lawyers.

In theory, traffic engineers determine where signs and signals need to be placed. However, If someone gets in an accident and can claim that it was caused by the lack of a stop sign, then they'll sue the state or local government. Even if the government wins the case, it costs money to defend. It probably quickly became cheaper to just put stop signs everywhere rather than risk going to court.

Honestly, now that I think about it, I'm not sure if there'd be any difference if they pulled the stop signs. Many people will already blow through a stop sign if they think they can get away with it, even when there's someone else already going through the intersection. Maybe there'd be some more accidents if they removed some stop signs, but maybe fear would keep more people in line.

In Germany we have right-before-left on unmarked junctions. I have the feeling that something like that just does not exist in the US? Oh and does it exist in the UK as left-before-right?