A peculiar blind spot at a junction in the UK

Pa ElGrande

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYeeTvitvFU

Updated: Collision Course: Why This Type Of Road Junction Will Keep Killing Cyclists


An interesting root cause analysis and while it is something that you may not experience personally, it is something to consider when cycling on unfamiliar roads.

magicbastarder

and barely 15s in, a driver demonstrates that stop signs are for the weak.

Eamonnator

magicbastarder wrote: »

and barely 15s in, a driver demonstrates that stop signs are for the weak.

That was just mad, he flew through it.

Roadtoad

I kinda thought the traffic was 'fake', or else the presenter kept resetting his clock until there was a situation approaching.

Rathbride Cross on the Curragh of Kildare was rejigged so that the minor roads didn't allow rolling straight through. This is an open, no fencing area, with roads crossing at 90 deg. Other examples come to mind too.

TheBlaaMan

£100,000 to save a few lives, seems a bargain.

These type of cross roads are plentiful. One, Gaultier Cross just outside Waterford, was re-profiled 10-15 years ago and followed a number of bad accidents over the previous decades. The approach from the east was downhill, adding to the risk

It can be done and should be done.


Before:


After:

magicbastarder

Roadtoad wrote: »

I kinda thought the traffic was 'fake'

you mean he prearranged the traffic?

this is the crossroads, it's not in the middle of a town, but neither is it in the middle of nowhere:

https://www.google.com/maps/@50.862911,-1.4517375,15.5z

CramCycle

I would have thought, in keeping with the local conservation theme, plant aload of trees that are similar to the local woodlands around the junction. Take away the sightlines?

magicbastarder

uh, Cram, you can't just go planting new trees in a New Forest.

Large bottle small glass

£100,000 seems way too cheap to me.

Simple realignment like suggested in video have been done all over country, most done years ago.

The main risk used to be at night. Was helped with the switch off lights manoeuvre

The bigger A pillars on modern cars, especially SUV is an issue, along with human eye not be very good at lateral vision (Google sacades) and not seeing much close to edges of "viewing"frame i.e. the A frame.

There's a junction at bottom of Patrick's hill in Cork with 3 stops signs, all of which are ignored. It's a mystery to me how there isn't more accidents there, especially involving pedestrians.

I've seen taxis go through without slowing at all.

JimmyVik

3 of these within a couple of Km of each other on the R125 between Kilsallaghan and Swords. Accidents weekly at them. 2 year old child killed at one a few years ago. They put up green bollards every few years when there is a really bad accident. But the bollards get run over too. A friend is a fireman and says he is out there weekly with people running stop signs

magicbastarder

i guess one of those junctions is the one near lispopple apples?

JimmyVik

magicbastarder wrote: »

i guess one of those junctions is the one near lispopple apples?

It is. That one I think is the least bad of the 3. Thats the one the 2 toddler was killed at.



The other two are towards Ashbourne about 3Km down the road.
St.Margarites junction is one of them.

B.A._Baracus

Roadtoad wrote: »

I kinda thought the traffic was 'fake', or else the presenter kept resetting his clock until there was a situation approaching.

Tom makes some interesting videos and there was no way the traffic was fake. His videos are just usually him and a camera. As you can see in this video and others.

As for resetting the clock? I assume you mean just keep recording and talking until someone broke the stop sign and use that shot? .... Highly unlikely. You can see the amount of traffic in the short shots he got.

Just people not caring about the stop sign.

plodder

Very interesting. It's exactly the same here. There is no culture of stopping at stop signs unless you see you "have to" give way. Even then, people regularly will brake to a slow roll, and trundle through without stopping. I watched that whole video twice and only one car near the very end, actually stopped, in a situation where it didn't have to, to avoid a collision. If anything was setup maybe it was that one.

I know in France*, the police check this, and all the other drivers, even the ones who thought they were stopping, but only slowed down, would have been fined. Never heard of gardai checking for that here; there would be uproar. In the US, the peculiarities of the 4-way stop system means people do know how to stop. You literally have to come to a complete stop before you get right of way. It's probably a lost cause here and in the UK, and offsetting the junction is the only thing that will work.

* only mentioned France because I know someone done for rolling past a Stop sign there similar to the one in the video here, with no traffic near. Most countries (apart from Ireland and maybe UK) do enforce these laws.

magicbastarder

JimmyVik wrote: »

It is. That one I think is the least bad of the 3. Thats the one the 2 toddler was killed at.



The other two are towards Ashbourne about 3Km down the road.
St.Margarites junction is one of them.

i think these are just junctions where people take the piss, rather than the ones with inherent design flaws like the one in the video. the junction of the R130 crossing the R125 and the R122 crossing it are both pretty much right angle junctions, and there's no 'false sense of security' clear visibility on approach for the motorists approaching on the minor roads.

for those junctions, the issue is (bar stupidity) lack of visibility for motorists who don't have right of way.

plodder

plodder wrote: »

Very interesting. It's exactly the same here. There is no culture of stopping at stop signs unless you see you "have to" give way. Even then, people regularly will brake to a slow roll, and trundle through without stopping. I watched that whole video twice and only one car near the very end, actually stopped, in a situation where it didn't have to, to avoid a collision. If anything was setup maybe it was that one.

I know in France, the police check this, and all the other drivers, even the ones who thought they were stopping, but only slowed down, would have been fined. Never heard of gardai checking for that here; there would be uproar. In the US, the peculiarities of the 4-way stop system means people do know how to stop. You literally have to come to a complete stop before you get right of way. It's probably a lost cause here and in the UK, and offsetting the junction is the only thing that will work.

The yanks have started to introduce rolling stops in some states. So long as someone is down to clutching in 2nd gear that's good enough in most instances.

plodder

Deleted User wrote: »

The yanks have started to introduce rolling stops in some states. So long as someone is down to clutching in 2nd gear that's good enough in most instances.

Can't find any references to that. Lots of links to the cops giving tickets for failing to stop. I don't see how it would work at your typical 4-way stop anyway. You go through the junction in order, based literally on the instant when you stop. If nobody stopped, it would be much harder to know who got there first, and a lot more dangerous too.

JimmyVik

magicbastarder wrote: »

i think these are just junctions where people take the piss, rather than the ones with inherent design flaws like the one in the video. the junction of the R130 crossing the R125 and the R122 crossing it are both pretty much right angle junctions, and there's no 'false sense of security' clear visibility on approach for the motorists approaching on the minor roads.

for those junctions, the issue is (bar stupidity) lack of visibility for motorists who don't have right of way.

When coming through one of those it looks like the road just continues straight. You are right, you would not even know it was a cross roads if you werent paying attention to the stop signs half hidden by the ditches.


The problem is that there is at least one person per week who goes straight through at normal speed. I missed one of them myself only about 3 months ago by inches. If I was a tenth of a second ahead of where I was he would have hit the side of us at 80kph or I would have hit him. I couldnt see him, he couldnt see me. He just ran through the stop sign. Nobody knew what happened til the person is in the middle of the main road.



It happens every 2 or 3 weeks that there is a very bad accident. Cars chopped in half. God knows what would happen to a cyclist. It needs the same solution. Not having a 4 way junction and staggering.

magicbastarder

JimmyVik wrote: »

When coming through one of those it looks like the road just continues straight.

which one do you mean?
i'd be most familiar with the ones on the garristown road and the oldtown road.
outbound on the oldtown road there's a flashing sign warning of the junction, but that's been slowly failing over the last few months (have not been out that way in a month or two, obviously).

JimmyVik

magicbastarder wrote: »

which one do you mean?
i'd be most familiar with the ones on the garristown road and the oldtown road.
outbound on the oldtown road there's a flashing sign warning of the junction, but that's been slowly failing over the last few months (have not been out that way in a month or two, obviously).

Both of those. Especially the oldtown / st margarets one.
People still flying through it even when the signs were working.


I think even when there is a sign, they think the junction is further up the road than it is and just drive straight across the main road.

Wishbone Ash

Another one is the crossroads on the road between Julianstown (opposite school) to Stamullen (Cock Hill Rd). Heading south, the crossroads seems to suddenly 'arrive out of nowhere'. It's near the M1 underpass and they have subsequently put up advance STOP signs.

I'm embarassed to admit that I drove through it one night only realising when I had crossed the other road. Gave myself a bit of a fright. What's even worse is that I've cycled through it loads of times so it's not as if it was new to me.:o

funkyuser

https://singletrackworld.com/2018/01/collision-course-why-this-type-of-road-junction-will-keep-killing-cyclists/

wondering how common these kind of accidents are