Nuxx:619d599b-3d8e-48f2-bf97-859a685db8ae@j12g2000vbl.googlegroups.com

Path: num2.nntp.dca.giganews.com!num1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!number.nntp.dca.giganews.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!postnews.google.com!j12g2000vbl.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail Message-ID: <619d599b-3d8e-48f2-bf97-859a685db8ae@j12g2000vbl.googlegroups.com> From: Nuxx Bar  Newsgroups: uk.rec.cycling Subject: Re: Something the Car-Haters Won't Like Date: Sun, 10 May 2009 11:29:10 -0700 (PDT) References:    Lines: 39 Organization: http://groups.google.com NNTP-Posting-Host: 86.145.66.20 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Trace: posting.google.com 1241980150 3674 127.0.0.1 (10 May 2009 18:29:10 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 10 May 2009 18:29:10 +0000 (UTC) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: j12g2000vbl.googlegroups.com; posting-host=86.145.66.20; posting-account=7_6kYAkAAABD6HrjM0VxehwvZOKMxm4g User-Agent: G2/1.0 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.9.0.10) Gecko/2009042316 Firefox/3.0.10 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729),gzip(gfe),gzip(gfe) Bytes: 3198 Xref: perfectly-safe.chapmancentral.co.uk uk.rec.cycling:700553

On May 10, 5:59=A0pm, "mileburner"  wrote: > > Traffic lights exist to stop cars ploughing in to each other.

As I said: something the car-haters won't like.

> In our town, when the lights in the centre are down, the traffic flows fa= r > better (albeit slower). There is no congestion but unfortunately pedestri= ans > don't get much of a chance to cross.

Funny, because every time I've seen a set of traffic lights down, traffic flows much better, *and* pedestrians seem to be able to cross just fine...I've never seen anyone waiting for any length of time. This just seems to be a case of "Congestion's been eliminated, and I don't like it because I hate cars, so I'm going to try to find an excuse to complain about it, rather than just admitting that I don't like it because I hate cars". Same old on URC.

> I actually think the four-way stop (as found in the US) works far better > than lights for both safety and reducing congestion. Everyone has to stop= , > and the first to get there has right of way. So when you arrive at a stop= , > you just wait for everyone else to go who got there before you, and then > *you* go. It is actually quite civilised, even in peak times.

Well, that would possibly be better than non-traffic-actuated lights (and even traffic-actuated ones in a lot of cases, since they still have a lot of dead time). It's still a stupid idea for a junction between a major, busy road and a minor one though...why should everyone on the major road have to stop when they can see that there's nothing on the minor road for ages beforehand?

At the end of the day, any measure which makes car drivers stop completely unnecessarily, when there are no conflicting vehicles, cyclists or pedestrians about, can only please one group of people: car-haters who want the driver to suffer just for the sake of it.