escalade accident october 1st 2007

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If there weren't any stop or yield signs, and there wasn't any other means (eg road markings) by which one stream of traffic knew it had to give way to the other, it sounds as if the road designers should be the ones charged by the police on the grounds that the junction was inherently dangerous.

"Mortimer" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@posted.plusnet:

Don't know about Saskatchewan, but such intersections are common in rural Manitoba. Each corner is instead marked by a green and white reflective pole. I think it's expected that you will treat each intersection as a 4- way stop, but traffic on those roads is so light (i.e.: nonexistent) that you get complacent and just give a cursory glance before cruising through.

Ah, so there was at least a "sign" of sorts - I presume that the green and white pole is described in the local highway code so that drivers know what it signifies.

I suppose I'm a bit spoiled being from the UK where (almost) all junctions have a well-defined major and minor road, with the minor road having Give Way signs and/or dashed white lines across the road - apart from driveways and farm tracks leading onto a road where it's obvious that the drive/track gives way to the road. The only exception is a roundabout (rotary, traffic circle) where the defined rule is that traffic joining the roundabout gives way to traffic from the right which is already on the roundabout (in the US and Canada, you'd give way to traffic from the left in this situation).

Interestingly, four-way-stop junctions haven't made it over the the UK: our rules or precedence are based on *where* different streams or traffic are in relation to each other, rather than the order in which they arrive at the junction.

They are very common in rural Virginia as well. Not marked with stop signs when the terrain is very flat and you could easily see drivers coming in the other direction. But people don't pay attention.

There's a road in Chesapeake that is marked 35 mph, with a very sharp curve that has a ditch on the outside, and a sign marking the curve for

15 mph maximum. People get killed there all the time, usually driving in excess of 60 mph around the 15 mph curve. What can I say? People don't pay attention to the terrain and they don't read the signs, they're going to get hurt. Doesn't anyone learn ANYTHING in driver's education class?

--scott

This article got me thinking about the legal issues associated with unmarked intersections. I saw a few interesting references:

The North Carolina statute seems clear enough:

.... § 20-155. Right-of-way.

(a) When two vehicles approach or enter an intersection from different highways at approximately the same time, the driver of the vehicle on the left shall yield the right-of-way to the vehicle on the right.

(b) The driver of a vehicle intending to turn to the left within an intersection or into an alley, private road, or driveway shall yield the right-of-way to any vehicle approaching from the opposite direction which is within the intersection or so close as to constitute an immediate hazard.

(c) The driver of any vehicle upon a highway within a business or residence district shall yield the right-of-way to a pedestrian crossing such highway within any clearly marked crosswalk, or any regular pedestrian crossing included in the prolongation of the lateral boundary lines of the adjacent sidewalk at the end of a block, except at intersections where the movement of traffic is being regulated by traffic officers or traffic direction devices.

(d) The driver of any vehicle approaching but not having entered a traffic circle shall yield the right-of-way to a vehicle already within such traffic circle. (1937, c. 407, s. 117; 1949, c. 1016, s.

2; 1955, c. 913, ss. 6, 7; 1967, c. 1053; 1973, c. 1330, s. 20.)

....

"Mortimer" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@posted.plusnet:

Rural Canada (and I mean REALLY rural...) has vast tracts of land with almost no population at all. And I mean tracts of thousands (millions?) of acres where you can drive for two hours at 60mph and encounter maybe one farm pickup truck the entire time. The roads are the same as when they were surveyed in the 19th century, laid out in dead-straight 1x2 mile rectangles. There isn't really any major or minor road in those cases. No lighting either, not even at intersections, and railroad crossings are marked with a simple white "X" sign.

Good booze cruise territory. ;^)

Once you do hit a "major" road (e.g.: provincial highway) you usually have stop signs for the minor road intersecting it.

"Roundabouts" are extremely rare in Canada. I've seen a few in Calgary, in the new "planned" towns they're erecting with haste over thousands of acres at once. There are none in Ontario, to my knowledge.

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In Saskatchewan (and many other places, probably) if there are no signs, the default is to yield to the vehicle approaching from the right.

According to the report:

"The bus was travelling south on the grid road when it was in the collision with the Cadillac SUV, which was heading east on another rural road'

The SUV was approaching from the right, so barrring some unusual circumstances, the bus driver is at fault.