The city ultimately determined the intersection did not meet the required traffic volume for additional stop signs
For the record, this is 100% a lie. Every single warrant document (list of criteria) used by an engineer will have two magic words written at the bottom of the list:
“Engineering judgement.”
That means there is no such thing as a “required traffic volume” for a stop sign or any other kind of signal or marking. If the engineer, in his professional judgement, agrees that one is warranted, it’s warranted.
Engineers who hide behind things like warrants, pretending their hands are tied by them, are cowards and aren’t doing their jobs properly.
The city engineer who refused to approve the stop sign didn’t want to approve it because he cared more about drivers’ convenience than he did children’s safety, but was too chickenshit to tell it to the dad’s face.
If 50 people sign a petition, you don’t need to do a study. Just put in the fucking stop sign.
Even if the vehicle traffic didn’t meet some imaginary quota, that says nothing of the pedestrian traffic. Just another signal of our car-centric society.
That’s typically one of the warrants. In addition to vehicle, bicycle, and pedestrian volumes, other warrants include things like vehicle approach speed, sight distance, and crash statistics.
There are stop signs in the middle of nowhere Ohio, where there’s literally a few cars on the road a day. I don’t see how volume should come into play when you’re next to a playground.
Yeah here in WI too. Like on 55mph state highways in the literal middle of nowhere, as in the intersection is corn fields on every quadrant.
Its weird, but of course I stop. Im only ever stopping for the corn, but I aint trying to have some cop come flying out of the corn and tear my ass up either lol
There is usually some guidance, although the regulations are usually written with more wiggle room than structural standards because of varying site conditions.
However, the hill causing an increase to the speed of the car and that the area has a known pedestrian draw to it would tip the scales more towards installing a stop sign.
Just install these instead:
hey that’s cheating. that was how i crossed busy streets when i was walking home from undergrad.
i had a bright neon painted metal water bottle. I would raise it and make eye contact. just like that. like, this is mine, but it can be yours. you don’t know if it weighs an ounce or 5 pounds. stops traffic remarkably well, especially considering the law and the sign everyone ignored right above my head said “stop for pedestrians”.
yes, i did have a death wish you don’t need to ask. living in utah does that to you when you’ve seen life on the outside.
Is Utah that bad? It’s at the top of so many lists. I could imagine the people being the biggest problem, though.
it was, yeah.
there is incentive to game those lists. they are… what is the word… tourism? advertisement? other places don’t have as much riding on gaming those lists as utah does. it’s not their religion that looks bad when it’s not #1.
The city ultimately determined the intersection did not meet the required traffic volume for additional stop signs,
It shouldn’t be about how much traffic there is. If people are going too fast and/or there’s a visibility issue and/or there’s danger of kids walking into the street, there needs to be a stop sign because that actually slows people down and makes it safer for everyone involved. Even my carbrain understands that.
The panthers used to get stop lights put in in weeks that localities had been refusing calls from for years. You want to do stuff like this, get organized. And not dancing in frog suits organized, militant, community focused organized with educational programs and childcare for your community.
The Panthers did it because their communities were being systematically destroyed by the government. It’s not the same at all.
That’s a hard line to walk. Being so afraid your kid will get hit by a car that you do something that could get you sent to prison, where you certainly won’t be able to do anything for said kid.
The city officials need to be the ones facing consequences for this, not him.
Courts and juries are somewhat good at identifying bureaucratic incompetence. Prison is unlikely, but the fact he will have to appear in court likely a few times to resolve this is still not great.
He will probably get a fine at the end of the day
As he should. Probably an unpopular take, but even if this guy was right this time, we shouldn’t be accepting this type of behavior.
What type of behavior? Did he do something to endanger the public?
“Spider-Man is a menace!” -you, apparently.
Nah, fuck that noise. Vigilante pedestrian infrastructure saves lives and costs the state nothing. Don’t wait for a bunch snobby beurocrats to tell you your neighborhood is unfit for support. Fill potholes. Fix sidewalks. Install stop signs where needed. Be the change, call out the lack of action and challenge these chicken shits to do better.
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I don’t have a problem with this.
Random people don’t get to decide where stop signs go and do not go.
How about if someone just decided to remove a stop sign.
How about if someone just decided to remove a stop sign.
Are those 2 situations equivalent at all? I can’t think of a situation where adding a stop sign up would make the intersection more dangerous whereas the removal of one would almost certainly make it more dangerous. In your mind is the only way to regulate this to ban both for some reason?
Traffic control is a massive issue that involves numerous factors beyond “danger”.
So yes you can not have random entities making those decisions, There has to be a single governing body.
I agree, just addressing your hypothetical at the end and how that doesn’t follow logically.
car drivers would learn to be more careful and less selfish
I prefer selfish car drivers; they’re predictable. I’m fine with them stopping only because there’s a stop sign. When a car driver decides to be “nice” and gestures for me to go, that’s when I get concerned.
selfish car drivers certainly aren’t predictable as they break laws already inplace
If they’re ignoring the law, then the sign isn’t changing their behavior.
it will, cause there would be more chaos on the road and less predictability, so they would be forced to
The cops don’t care if the stop sign wasn’t there. They’ll give you a ticket anyway.
While yes, you get out of the ticket if you prove the sign was missing at the time of the infraction.
Edit: Just don’t give them any attitude or they’ll arrest you for resisting arrest.
Unfortunately, yes, they have to “punish” this.
But it’s still a great publicity stunt that has now gotten the eyes of many people, a new petition on the matter would likely gather a lot more support.
He’s not a random person, he’s a resident of the neighborhood where he made the change. City officials and this alleged traffic engineer would be considered the “random people” here as they have absolutely zero stake in any of this.
City officials and this alleged traffic engineer would be considered the “random people” here
It’s literally their fucking job dude, what are you talking about.
Why are they an “alleged” traffic engineer? Because you don’t like what they did?
So what if it’s their job when they clearly aren’t doing it and have no connection to the neighborhood? This is a lame appeal to authority fallacy.
Some random official and random engineer checks some bad plans and paperwork and claims “stop signs and crosswalks aren’t needed” so we should just automatically defer to their decision despite the residents who actually live at and use this intersection overwhelmingly claiming the exact opposite? That’s utter nonsense.
I say alleged traffic engineer because they’re claiming they performed a traffic study at this intersection despite residents claiming to see zero evidence of this being performed, but I guess you believe job titles automatically bestow someone with unimpeachable honesty and integrity. A city official made the claim so it must be accurate and true.
Bureaucracy at its finest
Much like that park bathroom that was going to cost something like $2M to install in San Francisco. Once the residents and news got ahold of the story, suddenly the bathroom would only cost $100k to install.
Anarchism meets the state.
Direct action and taking charge of the change you want to see is great, states fucking things up because they’re not the ones in power is pathetic.
Yeah what could possibly go wrong if we just let every Tom, Dick and Harry with no knowledge or experience in any of this, to just put up traffic signs anywhere they want?
Surely that goes both ways right? There’s a stop sign by my house that I don’t like, so I’m going to just remove it. Fuck the state, right?
There’s a difference between lone individuals tearing out stop signs and a neighborhood collectively deciding to install one near a park.
Yeah, it’s called a city council
Real “If we let gay people get married, soon people will be marrying their hamsters” energy
It’s really not that at all, but go off
It really is. Slippery slope fallacy. Letting one neighborhood collectively decide to make an intersection by a park safer for children to cross is not the same as letting all people make their own decisions regarding signs and intersections. We are capable of handling individual situations as context-sensitive instead of assuming universal application is the only option.
It’s not slippery slope, it’s literally the same law. You can’t just add or remove signs on a whim.
Wasn’t on a whim. And you totally can. Whether or not it’s a good idea or without consequence is a different story. However, it’s not a stretch to suggest that most people who deal with road infrastructure have dealt with unsafe conditions that could be avoided with restructure. If conditions were unsafe, nothing was being done about it, and the community did something about it to make it safer, power to the people. No one is suggesting a precedent should be set by this, but I would suggest that if we don’t want a repeating pattern, there ought to be a better, more expedient process in place than breaking the law to make this action unnecessary.
I want to get together with my neighbor across the street and put a toll booth in front of my house. I live at the entrance to a cul-de-sac.
Our own neighborhoods don’t belong to us.
Brb, adding a bike lane to the nearest stroad
And once someone (probably a child) gets hit and dies, the city will say how sorry this tragedy is… will claim they’ll do something, and then do nothing. Because words are cheap. Oh, and they’ll act like this wasn’t avoidable, there was no way to know this kind of thing could happen.
will claim they’ll do something, and then do nothing.
How would they possibly benefit from not doing anything about it in that situation? Your local municipal government isn’t necessarily out to get you dude, it’s usually made up mostly of normal people who want to do whats best for their community.
If you feels so strongly about this, why don’t you run for city council?
I know, why don’t you got to ONE fucking city council meeting?
My city approved a monopoly because a business threatened not to come to the city if it had to compete. Truly, what was best for the community! Oh, and 3M dumps a lot of crap into the water because they don’t want to spend the money to properly filter it, wasn’t until a large grocery brand showed up and forced their hand that the city did ANYTHING about the terrible water. Just normal people who want to do whats best for their community…
If you feels so strongly about this, why don’t you run for city council?
Must be nice to have as much free time as you do to just take on additional responsibilities/roles in life. Or are you implying that if I’m not on the city council, I’m not allowed to have an opinion…? What exactly is your point and why are you taking it so personally?
Its quota season.
Good. (Downvote me all you want)
If you let everyone design their local traffic flow it will be impossible to go anywhere. That’s worse than everyone deciding if they want low-income housing or a safe injection site in their neighborhood.
A car-brained, embarrassing comment.
The safety of children is more important than the speed you’re able to drive to Krispy Kreme Donuts. If the government doesn’t address it, the people will. You barking about traffic flow is irrelevant and I do not care.
Yeah, people also don’t want high-speed rail tracks going past their house or whatever.
If the government doesn’t address it, the people will.
Good luck with that. Most people like cars a lot more than I do.
It goes both ways. We have engineers trained to do this shit for a whole bunch of reasons, and safety of pedestrians is like the main one.
The intersection was already a 2-way stop and, given the street topology and level of service, changing it to an all-way stop is benign.
The concern I have is that part of the charges include painting the crosswalk where one already exists. That’s not “design[ing] their local traffic flow,” but following up with expected public works. Granted he painted a ladder design rather than a standard continental pattern, but you should probably just shut the fuck up in the future.
Yeah, the crosswalk part was harmless, even if he technically wasn’t supposed to do the municipality’s job for them. The rest I’ll take your word for.
The charges include interfering with a traffic control device, grand theft, and vandalism exceeding $400
Actually reading the article, the first fits, but the rest is definitely the cops power tripping, unless he stole the equipment to do it.
This was in El Segundo? Wonder if they found my wallet.
Good! Filthy criminal! Lock 'm up!
/s
imo if you are going to start changing how the road is, start blocking it or start damaging the road to force a speedbump or hole. It’s a lot cheaper than spending 1000$ on a sign they can easily just take down, a lot faster and less likely to get caught in the act.
That seems counterproductive because it just antagonizes people. His method blends in with the rest of the road and will likely gain much better compliance from drivers.
I agree but, thats sort of the point. The first alternative is a lot of money that takes a bunch of time to setup, just for the city to very cheaply and quickly reverse it. They had already /tried/ that approach and the city said no, doing it themselves was just a bad plan to begin with.
The city at the moment is out maybe 20 minutes to take the sign down, and then can go back to sticking their head in the sand.
A damaged road? can take weeks to months to fix, and requires a dedicated crew and equipment, all while forcing vehicles to slow down due to it, while using tools that are likely just laying about the garage. Don’t take me wrong, both methods are super illegal, but, one is morally bad, cheap and hard to fix, where one is morally good, expensive, time consuming and easily fixed.
Our local playground has no traffic signs (aside from a playground sign) and a very faded crosswalk, but everyone knows to slow way down before reaching it because if they don’t the potholes(winter kills the roads) will make them regret it.
The town “fixes” it every few years or so.
I just think this guy’s approach is king because he put in a ton of time and effort to do it right with expensive materials, has a very sympathetic cause, and has all of the public and media on his side with the city looking like unreasonable bad guys. Another example of this is the guy who updated a freeway sign (also in CA) to better show the upcoming split and was never caught. He waited until the statute of limitations ran out and published the story of himself doing it online
When you start tearing up the road that you and your neighbors use daily, people are going to turn on you and make you a pariah which not only hurts yourself but also your cause. I bet you this man’s charges get dropped and the city will cave to get some good PR with very little effort.
Now for places with a shit ton of potholes and bad roads, I think spray painting dicks or other vulgar things on them is very effective vandalism because the examples out there show that the city/county will be quick to correct the issue and everyone has a laugh about it.
Yea i get what you mean. Also I know what case you are talking about I think, That was the case where they never even noticed he did it until he said something right? I saw a youtube video on that a year or two ago.
