Drove into a different part of the country last night to look at a few things (just needed to get out of the apartment for a while as much as anything)….. I’m sure I have mentioned this in one of my traffic blogs, but the whole 4 way stop thing got hammed yesterday.
The town we needed up in, Hemet, seems to be the capital of 4 way stops, one after the other for miles on end. Stop start, stop start, stop start, it was so frustrating. No wonder you end up doing whats called a ‘Californian stop’, its where the front of the car just dips down, but you dont actually stop. Its totally illegal. Thats whats called a moving violation. Its one of the worst fines you can get, it counts on your driving record and will affect your insurance premium. Every one takes such a huge risk doing it. I have been really trying hard to come to a full stop, but yesterday it was really getting ridiculous!
To top it off the whole silly thing of first there is the first to go, I mean what is that about?!?! You get the case where you have two cars rushing up to a stop sign to be the first not to ‘stop’ and thus the first to demand their right of way through it!
I would love to have seen (not been in, just next to) Gary driving his bus down this road yesterday, so many stops and starts with at least 3 gear changes between stops. Man, it would have been carnage!
So, Im sure I have done a hopeless job describing it all….. lets have one last go…… Its a 4 way cross road, you approach it, watching what the other 3 cars are doing. If you stop first, you get to go first, no matter what the others are doing, turning or going straight, if you are the 3rd car to pull up (behind 2 others), you get to go 3ed in line. If you are 3-4 cars back, you need to keep an eye on the other 3 cars as well, and first to pull up after the ones in front is next to go. Its really crazy, its really slow, its really frustrating.
It totally fails to be blog fodder, but I had to vent …….. (And I had to relate how amusing it was for me to picture Garys bus just cruising through them all in 5th gear!)
