05-16-2016, 04:55 PM
I’ve actually witnessed somebody stopped on Moore at Allen to let kids cross Moore. This is before the intersection was changed to a 4-way stop. So Allen had stop signs but Moore was supposed to take the right-of-way. Anyway, this person was flipping off all the opposing direction traffic which was continuing through as per the rules. So they managed to not help the kids while possibly making other people wonder why they were being insulted.
I was not impressed. We have pre-determined rules for a reason; if everybody starts being rude to everybody else for violating their particular idea of how the rules ought to be (but are not), then it starts getting more than a little confusing.
Having said that, I think the frequency of this behaviour of ceding right-of-way says that many motorists are actually happy to share the right of way, do care about pedestrians, and would be happy with rules that gave pedestrians more priority. This in turn makes me think that two-lane roads with plentiful pedestrian refuges should be the model for most busy streets. On such a road, stopping at a pedestrian refuge to allow pedestrians to cross actually is safe because it completely stops the traffic between the refuge and one side of the road.
Of course, when I suggested that this might be appropriate on Allen (and other streets) at the Spur Line Trail, it went right over the heads of the city staff. They started talking about the new crosswalk legislation as if it was some great new innovation when really it’s just a minor tweak to the allowed options for crosswalk signage.
I was not impressed. We have pre-determined rules for a reason; if everybody starts being rude to everybody else for violating their particular idea of how the rules ought to be (but are not), then it starts getting more than a little confusing.
Having said that, I think the frequency of this behaviour of ceding right-of-way says that many motorists are actually happy to share the right of way, do care about pedestrians, and would be happy with rules that gave pedestrians more priority. This in turn makes me think that two-lane roads with plentiful pedestrian refuges should be the model for most busy streets. On such a road, stopping at a pedestrian refuge to allow pedestrians to cross actually is safe because it completely stops the traffic between the refuge and one side of the road.
Of course, when I suggested that this might be appropriate on Allen (and other streets) at the Spur Line Trail, it went right over the heads of the city staff. They started talking about the new crosswalk legislation as if it was some great new innovation when really it’s just a minor tweak to the allowed options for crosswalk signage.