Re: One word: Roundabout
Where I live we've been introducing roundabouts here and there to avoid four way controlled intersections. Those of us who have been to the UK and successfully navigated them (it is harder than you think when you aren't used to them, and driving on the wrong side of the road to boot, so we apologize for slowing down unduly when approaching them on occasion) know what to do, but a lot of people are lost. Especially those from out of town.
Don't underestimate how difficult it is to deal with something you aren't used to. People who grew up where there are roundabouts understood implicitly how to drive them before they ever got behind the wheel, simply by being in the car when others did. There's a lot more thinking required to navigate them than a four way with lights. You just do what the lights tell you, easy peasy. Yeah, it isn't always the most efficient, but assuming you do like most do around here and have two seconds of all red to avoid problems from people who chase the last nanosecond of yellow, they are probably safer in the US than roundabouts. Maybe things would be different if we had roundabouts our whole lives, but there are very few places in the US where that's the case (and they still have problems with visitors)
One thing that I think has helped with the yellow light chasers is that most of the walk/don't walk signs in intersections have a countdown timer. When the clock reaches 0, the light goes yellow. So you can tell a block away whether you will be able to make the light or not. It acts as sort of a pre-yellow warning so you don't see very many cases of someone racing through while it is in the process of turning red.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
