Thank you, Vincent Ferrari!

I don’t necessarily know that traffic calming is what is needed as much as a knowledge by people blowing that stop sign that there is something waiting at the bottom to make them pay for doing it.

Oh, and my “mode of choice” is out of necessity, my friend.  It’s not easy living in the Bronx and working in Rockland if you do it by some method other than a car.  I do ride a bike, walk, and take public transport when possible, so I’m not just a “driver.”  Just wanted to clarify 🙂

I applaud this video, though to me it looked like you might have also done a california/rolling stop through the stop sign also.

Sure no one seems to come to a full and complete stop, but from a practical standpoint, slowing down to a couple of mph is essentially the same as a complete stop as far as safely being able to determine whether any cars or pedestrians are coming. 

The fact that the video is sped up makes this look much more dangerous than it probably is.  Lets see the same video in real time.  I’ll bet it doesn’t look nearly as dangerous as the sped up version.

Great video-  spot on commentary!

You hear so much about quotas and crimestat, and cops feeling that they have to make their numbers,  it makes you wonder why they can’t do it the simple way by enforcing basic laws.  Even if they did just the most egregious ones- the left turn at speed w/o a blinker- they not only make their quotas, but set a precedent that under the “broken window”  theory could be quite important- that traffic laws are taken seriously and are to be obeyed, not winked at.

I wonder whether there is some way to create “passive” enforcement of the stop signs?  In private parts of the Bronx (Fieldston neighborhood?), the stop lines are painted on top of speed bumps (not a hump).  These force drivers to dramatically cut their speeds at the stop lines.

When I’ve raised this idea in the past in Westchester County, I’ve been told that it does not conform to the various state guidebooks describing what is legal and what is not.  But given how NYC DOT has gotten variances for traffic calming efforts (like the 20 mph Claremont neighborhood in Manhattan), maybe a NYC neighborhood would have better luck.

Post it please.  I don’t want to watch all 8 minutes, but would like to see a good sample of your video in real time.  Sorry but your sped up version really distorts what the reality looks like.  Are we concerned with a technicality of a FULL stop, which it looks like you didn’t do either, or are we concerned with unsafe behavior.  Yes, a few of those drivers look like they did really blow the stop sign in an unsafe manor.  Those are people we should be concerned about and the police be going after, not the people that come to a stop, but not a complete stop.

Why don’t cars stop at this stop sign?  Easy answer-as usual NYC misused a traffic control device.  Visibility at that corner is good enough that a yield sign would suffice.  A stop sign should only be used where visibility is so poor that you can’t determine if the way is clear without coming to a complete stop.  As I’ve said before, if you misuse or overuse traffic controls, they will tend to be taken far less seriously by all users.  NYC is famous for using stop signs where yield signs will suffice, and traffic signals where either stop signs or roundabouts would make more sense.  If you only use traffic controls sparingly and sensibly (and that includes setting speed limits more in line with the speeds people feel comfortable going, and/or narrowing the road if you feel current speeds are too high), then they will be taken a lot more seriously.

The second danger of overusing traffic controls is the fact that they’re often NOT taken seriously even in the few situations where they’re really needed because people have gotten into the habit of treating them casually.  Not coming to a complete stop at a stop sign on a blind corner is a good example.

I sharply disagree with the commenter above who thinks the stop sign should be replaced with a yield sign. 

It takes a few seconds  to stop at a stop sign.  I don’t think that’s asking too much.   

And from what I observe, drivers ignore yield signs just as often as they ignore stop signs.  I’ve heard that complaint very often from drivers themselves.

One more comment….”setting speed limits more in line with the speeds people feel comfortable going” sounds like insanity to me. 

@twitter-91605123:disqus I stand by my comments about setting speed limits at speeds people feel comfortable at.  The reason is reams of traffic studies show barring saturation enforcement (which is impossible to implement everywhere in NYC) that’s the speed people drive at, not the posted speed.  If you want to slow things down (and I largely agree NYC drivers go too fast), then you narrow the road.  That’s a permanent infrastructure solution to reducing speed which is shown to work, and which requires zero enforcement to work.

@6684b3affdda7131404c7efbe9dd4d54:disqus Roundabouts will work fine anywhere in NYC there is room for them.  And you totally missed my point about NYC using traffic control devices which aren’t appropriate to the situation.  You don’t stick a traffic light or a stop sign at an intersection because some ill-informed community board “feels” it would be safer, and yet this kind of nonsense goes on in NYC all the time.  There are certain criteria for the use of stop signs and traffic signals.  I’ve found more often than not these criteria are not met.

You say auto drivers don’t take the law seriously.  Well, I agree but the reason is partly because of the aforementioned overuse of traffic controls in inappropriate situations (and also partly because of near zero enforcement of ANY traffic laws).  If NYC only used stop signs where really needed, drivers would quickly learn that stop really means stop.  And police could occasionally be stationed at more dangerous intersections to ensure that they do.

Pedestrians crossing the street is an entirely separate topic.  Ideally, a pedestrian should be able to cross wherever they want, whenever they want, and motorists should have to yield to them.  Practically speaking, that can’t work in NYC.  But if you used more roundabouts and narrower roads, people might not drive much over 20 mph.  This would make crossing streets way safer and easier than it currently is.  Stop signs and traffic signals rarely make things safer.  I find often drivers speed between stop signs to make up for the time they lost stopping, or speed up to “make the light”.  You just don’t see reckless nonsense like this when you use roundabouts.

BTW, I took a transportation engineering course in Princeton University.  What exactly are your credentials here?  Lots of things which “seem” safer to a layperson really aren’t in the real world.  You won’t know that however until you study it.  Here’s a good read to get you started: http://www.bikewalk.org/pdfs/trafficcontrol_backtobasics.pdf

@twitter-91605123:disqus We both agree that far too many motorists operate in an unsafe manner.  That’s obvious even to a layperson.  The question is how to get it to stop. What might seem like a good answer to a layperson turns out not to be in reality.  I submit that street design plays a large role here.  NYC streets, and the traffic controls currently used on them, virtually encourage law breaking.  By everyone.  Obviously the consequences of a law-breaking motorist are much higher than that of a law-breaking cyclist or pedestrian, and therefore should receive the highest attention.  Sadly they don’t. Remember though that enforcement never has the effect of changing long-term behavior. This was learned decades ago trying to enforce the then 55 mph national speed limit.  At best you’ll get drivers to change behavior only when the police are around.  The police can’t be everywhere simultaneously.  This isn’t even getting into the fact that chasing down 55 mph violators probably killed more people than breaking the law did.  In any case, the police simply don’t have enough manpower to even begin to do enough enforcement to effect any behavioral changes.  And the idea of high-speed police chases on NYC streets to catch scofflaw motorists frankly scares me even more than the large numbers of reckless drivers.  In the end, street design is the only thing which can work in the long run.

As far as reducing speeds, lane widths are more important than anything else.  Lots of “narrow” one way residential streets in NYC are still around 15′ wide.  I’ll bet this is why drivers still speed on your narrow street.  I live on a “narrow” one way street which is about 15′ wide, and motorists still fly down the block at 30+ mph. Make the width no more than 10′ if you really want to slow drivers down.
When drivers go down a street with not more than one foot on either side of them, they can’t speed.
This is really easy to do in practice. Just move the parked cars on one side 5 feet closer to the center of the street, and use that 5 feet of space next to the sidewalk for a buffered bike lane. You win twice. Drivers no longer speed, and cyclists have a safer place to travel. Chicanes work also to reduce speeds.

As for pedestrians, right now motorists can hit pedestrians with virtual immunity simply by saying “they lost control”. This is actually the heart of the problem. Change the law to automatically make motorists at fault if they hit vulnerable users like cyclists or pedestrians. This will get them to operate far more safely in mixed traffic situations than all the traffic controls in the world. And incidentally, NYC has less land area than Chicago, but has over ten times as many signaled intersections (and several times as many stop signs). Despite this, the per capita accident rate in NYC isn’t any lower than in Chicago.  This is just more proof that stop signs, and especially traffic signals, really don’t work. The best solution to deal with intersections is to use roundabouts.  If the space for a roundabout doesn’t exist, then use 4-way yields unless the intersection has poor visibility, in which case you use 4-way stop signs.  Better yet, if you can reduce prevailing traffic speeds to 20 mph or less, you can do away with controls at intersections entirely (provided you also have a vulnerable user law).  This actually works quite well wherever it’s been tried.  So does grade separation, although that solution is admittedly expensive.

OK the last pedestrian killed by a cyclist was in 2009, since then drivers have killed an average of 1 pedestrian per week ON THE SIDEWALK. During the last year cyclists were ticket at a rate that was 3 times that of drivers. Obviously I’m not the only person that sees that this is insane, but THIS IS INSANE!

I guess we don’t get to see the undistorted version of the video.  It would probably show a lot of drivers making the same kind of stop that Vincent made, or close to it. 

Joe, as usual you make some good points but they do not address the real problem.  The lack of respect for others that drivers have, as well as a lack or respect for the power and responsibility of operating a motor vehicle.  Sure you can force the majority to slow down with narrow streets, but there will always be a reckless minority who will abandon caution and will be even more dangerous on those narrow streets.  Without motorist having respect for others around them, and more stringent licensing requirements, the streets will continue to be dangerous. 

I also agree with you that ticketing cyclist is total BS.

Joe, I completely agree with your first paragraph.

I do however think that driving from an early age is important at developing the skills for driving.  It is my purely anecdotal observation that the worst drivers seem to be the ones that learned to drive as adults or grew up in cultures where driving is not the norm.

I agree with Joe R. on traffic calming. All the laws, signs, and traffic lights in the world do nothing to calm traffic. Only physics does. You can force drivers to slow down by using tricks such as narrowing lanes, which has already been mentioned, or forcing them to “zig-zag” which is basically what happens when going straight through a roundabout, but it can also be accomplished on narrow streets that have one parking lane and one travel lane, with the parking side alternating several times throughout the block. Then you can also consider bumps (though not my favorite measure).

Do you ever see people driving 70 mph on a narrow mountain road full of hairpin turns? No. You don’t even need to post a speed limit there. Physics does the work. (Sometimes a speed limit is posted anyway, but then it is an educational message instead of a seemingly arbitrary limit.)