January 6, 2009

Earth things I do not understand

I know they are not all over earth but they are quite frequent around my North American coordinates:

4-way stops!

Mea culpa here, yes, I will shamelessly admit that I am one of the drivers you hate. The one who hesitates, waits too long, goes in then slows down just to make sure it really was my turn... Let me try to explain my difficulties.

Four-way stop

I get the who gets there first rule. I'm a little bit confused with the who decides who got there first rule. The one on the right rule is supposed to take over, right? Let's assume for now that I always remember what the one on the right is supposed to do (go or yield??). Let's also go back to my amazing four-way diagram above and
  1. shed a tear for my aborted artistic career ( now you know why);
  2. assume it's traffic time. There are cars all over the intersection and cars behind them and so on...
Car A want to go toward Car C; Car C wants to go towards A. So they both go at the same time. Now it's time for B and D. Should they each want to go straight, then there is no problem. If D wants to go towards B but B want to go to its left towards A then there is a little problem. As it wants to cross over the D's "lane", I would assume that it would go after D, BUT while it goes, it completely stop the traffic for all cars. Say there is a D2 car waiting with the intention of going towards C. It would go at the same time as B. Now A2 and C2 have been waiting for three cars, they both want to go. Say they both want to go to their left? Are you as confused as me by now?

I think about those things. I'm not the only one. Yep, I'm complication #1 in Jim Loy's drivers' IQ test.

If you would like to know when I'm on the road (so that you're not), drop me a line.

3 comments:

  1. I will take a 4 way stop over a roundabout any day of the week!!

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  2. I was going to mention that we've started getting roundabouts and that they are awesome. (Well, it seems I'm still going to mention it ... but now I feel a bit guilty as Becky seems to not be a fan.)

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