Addendum: Stupid Traffic Situations #5

An addition to this earlier post.

#5 Unnecessary Stops
This one isn’t confusing or dangerous, just unnecessary. Opposing stop signs on the side of the store. The two screenshots are from opposite directions: the top going into the main parking lot area, and one leaving, which routes around the back of the store. On the top photo, on the left, to the left of the median area, is the heavily-used drive thru pharmacy on the side of the store. It’s a little obscured by the tree there. Likely the two stop signs were placed there to ensure the traffic “flows” safely. “Flows” is in quotation marks because traffic doesn’t flow very well here because of the stop signs. All that’s really needed is good turn signal discipline.

I’ll be honest: when no one is around, I drive right through these stop signs. Coming into the parking lot (top photo), there’s no accident risk if you blow through the stop sign. The opposite direction, there is risk since someone could be turning to go through the drive thru without using their signal. The people I’ve seen turn to go through there do so way before they get to the stop sign, regardless, as turning left at the stop sign is too awkwardly sharp. Because of this, opposing drivers have an early warning when someone is turning and the risk isn’t gray. I don’t know if any of this was predicted by the engineers. Probably not.

2 Comments

  • Ed Hurst says:

    This is inside the shopping area, so it’s technically private property. It suffers from all the flaws of business management trying to pretend they are traffic engineers. I’m willing to bet the stop signs were added long after the pavement had been laid. It looks very much like an afterthought. The second image makes me wonder if they ever expected significant traffic there in the first place.

    • Jay DiNitto says:

      It was definitely an afterthought. I don’t remember the details of the construction, but I remember it happening around when I moved to the area, when the store revamped some things. The basic road area was already there, but the stop signs, median, and drive thrus are modifications.

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