Originally Posted by Pants:
I think I saw a thing on Discovery channel or something similar once about a German town that took away all traffic lights and signs out of their city center. Apparently people slow down and pay more attention and the accident rate actually drops.
A massive intersection full of chaos like the one above, though? Gotta be some wrecks, right?
I've driven in Germany many times, and they put in "round a bouts" which are 1000 times better than lights or signs, but that shit up there is just Fn retarded.
Originally Posted by beach tribe:
I've driven in Germany many times, and they put in "round a bouts" which are 1000 times better than lights or signs, but that shit up there is just Fn retarded.
This is a video shot above Meskel Square in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. It's a massive free-for-all traffic intersection.
This one has been posted here before, but is also fun.
Highlights are the person wearing white in the bottom of the frame walking across teh street that gets caught between a car and moped at about the :36 mark, and the white car at the top that goes against traffic starting at about the 1:20 mark.
Originally Posted by Rain Man:
My guess would be that their system has a lot more minor wrecks and our system has a lot fewer wrecks, but perhaps they're more serious on average. Our system is based on people following rules strictly, which means you don't have to pay attention as much. When something bad happens, it's probably because neither driver saw it coming. There, the system is based on hypervigilance and aggression, so I bet the wrecks involve both drivers paying attention and just being unable to avoid each other.
Just a theory. I'm not sure how your German example fits. I'm talking about U.S. versus third world.
I recently spent some time in the Dominican Republic, and was fascinated by and studied their driving. Here we have defensive driving, they have offensive driving. Here our goal is to not get hit, in the DR(and in the intersection video) their goal is to not hit anyone. It makes a lot of sense and I actually believe it's a more civil/natural way than ours. Look at the movement of the vehicles in that intersection and think of walking through a crowded airport, in the airport there are general rules(most people walk on the right, etc...) but it can look chaotic, yet it's is mostly civil and there are very few collisions. We walk to not run into people, we're not thinking about right-of-way. The car horn comes into play here as well, here the horn is mostly to signal irritation, definitely a negative sound in most circumstances, over there the horn is an excuse me, lookout I'm over here, or oops I'm sorry. Despite appearances I believe it's a less stressful way to commute.
Originally Posted by beach tribe:
I gotta like B Griffen after bitch slapping the biebs and then this awesome move on some dude who was obviously heckling him or something.
That slapping the Biebs story isn't true and the guy was "obviously heckling him or something"? That makes no sense.
Originally Posted by beach tribe:
Here is one, but some of them are HUGE.
I love roundabouts but they're not perfect either. More so due to human error than anything, but..
I have to use one often when I'm travelling near work and some people just don't get it. Inevitably, you're going to have some people that are trying to enter the roundabout thinking they have the right-of-way so they don't yield and damn near get t-boned. Then you have the people that are in the roundabout that think the people trying to enter have the right-of-way so you create a small traffic jam because the movement inside of roundabout has stopped.
Probably the biggest issue, though, is that most people don't come to a full stop and either just want to get where they're going quickly or want to beat the oncoming traffic inside the roundabout, so they're so busy looking to the left that they never bother to look to their right (since they know traffic won't come from that direction). That creates a problem if there are pedestrians looking to cross while someone blows through the outlet into the roundabout.
Nothing is perfect though. Just speaking about my perception.
