Vid about a town in England that turned off their traffic lights and traffic flow magically smoothed itself out. Don't think this would happen in the states though. I'm sure someone would wreck in the first 5 minutes. Blind people gotta avoid some junctions though now that there aren't signals telling them when it's "safe" to cross.
http://www.wimp.com/trafficlights/ (http://www.wimp.com/trafficlights/)
I'm not terribly surprised. Here in Da Bronks, a place not revered for considerate, courteous drivers, there is a particular intersection where there is a one way stop sign (two one way streets). The street without the stop sign gets backed up due to a traffic light. When this happens (most of the time) drivers on the street without the stop sign yield to the drivers with the stop sign, turning the intersection into an alternate merge.
Europe has been experimenting with reducing traffic control to relax traffic, speed commuting and lower fuel consumption and emissions for a while now.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.12/traffic.html (http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.12/traffic.html)
http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,448747,00.html (http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,448747,00.html)
England has lots of roundabouts.
those work fine with no signals.
every have come to a 4-way in town when the lights are out? its a cluster
Akron, OH is putting in roundabouts at such a rate it makes you wonder if the mayor's brother owns a roundabout factory.
I'm a big fan of the yield stop. I'd like to see more of those.
We used to have roundabouts everywhere in the Northeast. About 20 years ago they started tearing them out and replacing them with traffic lights.
NH is starting to use them again.
[bang] [bang] [bang]
There was a story about a year or so ago on one of those "20/20, dateline" shows. Might be about the same town in England. Ill try and find the story, but was an interesting take on all the signs and lights we use to make it safer, yet they are finding that it actually is making it worse and confusing. :-\
This might work in a town, but has no chance in a city of any size.
Whenever the power goes out traffic turns into instant gridlock, even though intersections just become 4-way stops. Non-signaled intersections just aren't an efficient way to move large numbers of vehicles.
Shit! Ya'll should see Florida after a hurricane and all the signals, lights and signs are blown down and there is no power.
Nobody knows what the make the beast with two backs to do.