And don’t forget the people who all want stop signs on the corner next to their house to slow down the speeders.
I swear we would have a 4 way stop on every corner in town if these idiots had their way.
Just like speed limits, there are engineering driven justification for stop signs. And none of them mention a justification being “because the mayor’s grand kids live on that street.”
In the good old days of oh, 20 years ago when newspapers actually sought to serve the public interest, the Chicago Tribune had a regular column(ist) who fielded traffic questions and challenges from the public in a very large (obviously) metro area.
Four-way stops were a frequent complaint for the reasons you stated. But then (and possibly now), IL law was very explicit about the criteria for a four-way stop in terms of cars per hour, visibility/sightlines and to prevent ‘clustering’ of stop signs.
And so, the columnist regularly challenged the placement of four-way stops at council meetings and in court. Grumpy and lazy politicians who planned their roads and traffic patterns poorly had no choice but to eliminate the illegal four-way stops.
A growing trend is the roundabout. I hear people complaining about these for some reason and just shake my head. There is never any standing traffic or backups even on 25 mph roads with roundabouts. Admittedly the double-ring roundabouts can be tricky for the inexperienced and the plain old clueless but they solve most four-way traffic issues instantly. They also prevent engineers and localities from bringing on an even more insidious ‘solution’ to occasionally-busy intersections: the traffic light.
There are residential areas in Palo Alto, California, that have exactly that. You never get out of second gear.