“In general, it seems that this is a favorite sign of local road builders,” the Russian traveler was surprised during his auto tour of the United States. “They don’t have as many cameras on the roads as there are STOP signs.”
According to a compatriot, America is a country of total dominance of STOP signs, where he did not notice a single “Main Road” and “Give way” signs familiar to Russian motorists, which at most intersections perform the function of determining the order of his passage. Although the latter is definitely found somewhere, it is extremely rare, he noted.
Let's give an explanation of the turboblogger from the pages of his blog in Yandex.Zen: “The main function of organizing the passage of unregulated intersections is performed by STOP signs. But the most interesting is not even that! Pay attention to the sign under the sign: ALL WAY. That is, the same sign is on all four roads that approach the intersection!
Attention, the question is: how to get through the intersection if cars have arrived from all four sides? No main, give way no, right hand rule… everyone on the right has a car to pass. The correct answer is easier than you might guess.
Intersections with STOP signs are passed in the order in which they arrived at it. Whoever stops first, moves first. And so on in a circle, even if there is a dense stream. All drivers just watch carefully, standing in a “virtual” queue for the passage.
By the way, for this reason, most drivers drive up to the STOP sign very slowly, looking to see if there is anyone else on the same sign before him. And they always stop, not like ours, when drivers only stop and, as it were, indicate that they have stopped … ”.
Help: The first stop sign in America was installed in Detroit, Michigan in 1915, although it is not recognized by drivers today. It was a white square sign measuring 61 x 61 cm with black letters. Then, until the 1950s, 47 of the 48 states had yellow stop signs. For years, traffic lights have used red to signal motorists to stop, so using that color for stop signs was also a logical choice. In 1954, the federal government revised the Uniform Traffic Control Device Manual, the national standard for traffic control devices, to change the stop sign to what we know today: a red and white octagon.
But if the traffic lights are red the color has been around for decades, why wasn't it used on stop signs much earlier? It was really a matter of practicality. The red color tarnishes and wears off easily, and back then there was no material from which a red sign could last in the open air for a significant period of time. The usual red came later.
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