Rules of the Road
Suppose you're at a stop sign behind another car, and that car has, as cars will, pulled out further than it's supposed to, into a crosswalk or sort of half into the intersection, but it's still stopped. Your car sits at the white "ligne d’arrêt" (I don't know what it's called in English), where the front-most car is supposed to be, also stopped. There are no other cars in the intersection, and the car in front of you goes. Should you:
A) Follow the car in front of you with no pause, as though you were at a red light that had just turned green.
B) Wait a certain amount of time (how much?) , as though you had just arrived at the stop sign, then proceed.
C) Pull up to where the car in front of you was, treating that as the location of the stop sign, stop (complete stop, 3 seconds, of course) and then go ahead.
I'm torn. I think I actually do (C), but I also think that's least likely to be correct. Does it make a difference if there are other cars in the intersection? Should it?
A) Follow the car in front of you with no pause, as though you were at a red light that had just turned green.
B) Wait a certain amount of time (how much?) , as though you had just arrived at the stop sign, then proceed.
C) Pull up to where the car in front of you was, treating that as the location of the stop sign, stop (complete stop, 3 seconds, of course) and then go ahead.
I'm torn. I think I actually do (C), but I also think that's least likely to be correct. Does it make a difference if there are other cars in the intersection? Should it?
posted by apk01004 at 2:38 AM
3 Comments:
I propose a new solution that is a hybrid between B and C. You ought to make a very short forward advance when the car in front of you goes, definitely not so far as they were advanced but enough to show that you clearly moved forward. You should then wait 3 seconds and then procede through the intersection and onward to better things.
I think it would be nice to follow a procedure that doesn't allow such deviant motorists to undermine the authority of the ligne d’arrêt.
As soon as the car in front of you departs through the intersection, act as though
(1) this car had stopped at the line just as it would have done, were it following the rules of the road
(2) you have just pulled up to the line, taking the place that you are pretending has just been vacated by the deviant motorist.
This protocol seems to me to be sufficiently regulatory in any scenario. When there are no other cars at the intersection, it amounts to choice A (if you drive the way I learned) or choice B with a three second pause (if you subscribe to this three second rule that I've never heard in my life). If there are other cars at the intersection, then you end up pretending that they were already there when you pulled up to the line and letting them go first (it really is their turn to go, since the car in front of you just took its own turn).
Does anybody know how far short of the line I can stop and still remain free of the expectation that I'll stop a second time before crossing it?
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