Why don't we have US style 4 way stops on our roads?

Fionn23ie

In Massachusetts and some other US states they have 4 ways stops. This is effectively a cross roads where no road or driver has right of way. Every car has to stop at the junction and then take turns in an orderly manner to proceed.

I am always very impressed at the discipline of the MA drivers (I drive there most often) and it makes me wonder about the cultural differences between that part of the US and Ireland.

Would these 4 way stops work in Ireland? What makes you think they would or wouldn't? What does it say about our culture?

GhostInTheRuins

Roundabouts are better, that's probably why we don't have them. For some reason americans don't like roundabouts.

Black Swan

GhostInTheRuins wrote: »

Roundabouts are better, that's probably why we don't have them. For some reason americans don't like roundabouts.

There has been an interesting cultural history and commentary regarding a well known roundabout in Southern California called the Los Alamitos Circle. It handles between 40,000 and 70,000 vehicles per day, but for some reason it has an undeserved bad reputation among drivers, some of whom avoid it. Not sure what this suggests about Californian or US American culture.

Four-way stops in the US are prevalent for some unexplained reason. In a paper by Edmund Waddell, Michigan Department of Transportation, he concludes from a cross-national comparison that modern roundabouts were generally more efficient, effective, and safer.

Brendan Bendar

Fionn23ie wrote: »

In Massachusetts and some other US states they have 4 ways stops. This is effectively a cross roads where no road or driver has right of way. Every car has to stop at the junction and then take turns in an orderly manner to proceed.

I am always very impressed at the discipline of the MA drivers (I drive there most often) and it makes me wonder about the cultural differences between that part of the US and Ireland.

Would these 4 way stops work in Ireland? What makes you think they would or wouldn't? What does it say about our culture?

I would be of the opinion they wouldn't work in Ireland.

We seem to have an attitude of doing anything that is not enforced.

Take a look in any supermarket car park and your question will be answered.

SpaceTime

There's research on this and roundabouts are way, way more effective in terms of throughout and much less likely to cause collisions.

manjosh

I believe because Ireland is smaller , and generally anything not systematic and protocol like is not our thing.

JackHeuston

Fionn23ie wrote: »

In Massachusetts and some other US states they have 4 ways stops. This is effectively a cross roads where no road or driver has right of way. Every car has to stop at the junction and then take turns in an orderly manner to proceed.

I am always very impressed at the discipline of the MA drivers (I drive there most often) and it makes me wonder about the cultural differences between that part of the US and Ireland.

Would these 4 way stops work in Ireland? What makes you think they would or wouldn't? What does it say about our culture?

Really? I always assumed MA drivers were pretty aggressive, but only by stereotypes. I drove all around the Midwest and they had these 4-way stops there too, anyway. Easy when they are small and with only two or three cars coming at once, confusing (at least in my opinion) with high traffic, or when they are so big you can't even see who's getting in.

Also, some people in those situations try to be "nice" and let others go even if it's not their turn, messing up everything. At least in MI, the first car arriving at the stpop sign is the first one to go, and then all the others depending on the order of arrival, at least this is what some local friends of mine told me.

I found extremely annoying having to stop even though I was 2000% sure nobody was around in a 5 miles range. And if you don't stop in those situations, you get a very bad habit that will cause issues when there will be cars...

GhostInTheRuins wrote: »

Roundabouts are better, that's probably why we don't have them. For some reason americans don't like roundabouts.

I found a couple of round abouts in Lincoln Township, MI but they were very small and unpractical... weird design. I'm not sure they know how to properly make/use them.

I prefer round abouts to 4-way stops.

looksee

And also we don't tend to have the nice, tidy, four right-angle-roads which make this possible. I found the four way stops terrifying, and I wasn't driving. I can't see how they can be relied on to work except in very low density traffic.

Sam Kade

Many Irish drivers haven't figured out roundabouts yet never mind confusing them with 4 way stops.

Peregrinus

At a four-way, all traffic approaching the junction is required to stop, and then road users have right of way in the order in which they arrived at the junction.

It requires good lines of sight in all directions from all approaches to the junction, so that nobody should ever have any difficulty in seeing the order in which other people arrived at the different entrances.

European countries, including ourselves, tend to favour the roundabout instead, where priority is assigned not by the order in which people arrive at the junction but by the direction from which they are coming. There is less room for misunderstanding here, since while poeople might be genuinely unsure or mistaken about who got there first, there is less room for disagreement about who is on the right. Plus, roundabouts are not an automatic stop, and so traffic generally flows better through them than through four-ways. The downside is that roundabouts are expensive to build and take up more land than a simple four-way.

SpaceTime

There was research done in the U.S. on this and the roundabout system proved a lot more effective and caused fewer tail backs because it's a type of almost non blocking junction.

American systems aren't necessarily there for any other reason that tradition and "just because".

The only advantage I can see of a 4 way stop is it's cheaper to install.

Roundabout can also deal with non-square junction layouts and connect more than 4 roads.

my3cents

Not sure if there is an equivalent in Ireland but the UK has "unmarked crossroads" where all traffic is supposed to stop. It used to be a classic part of everyones driving test as you could almost guarantee you'd be taken down a road with an unmarked crossroad where you were expected to stop and look for other traffic before proceeding. Driving straight through was a fail.