Comment by danenania
Left turns on green (with no green arrow) are also pretty bad imo, as are right turns on green with no arrow. In both cases pedestrians are supposed to have right-of-way, but cars often don't respect it.
Left turns on green (with no green arrow) are also pretty bad imo, as are right turns on green with no arrow. In both cases pedestrians are supposed to have right-of-way, but cars often don't respect it.
I think the interesting bit in this article is that "pedestrian scramble" is sort of the assumed default at a 4-way stop though the safety of that relies on drivers noticing Stop signs and also not treating them as Yield signs (and also not recognizing that Yield implies pedestrians, too). Why isn't it the default in the version of this intersection with lights instead of just stop signs? Why is it pedestrians have to "beg" for the scramble and cars just wait for a timer? Could this be red at all lanes by default and rely on something like weight sensors instead?
(I'm also amused at the idea of making a beg button for cars. Maybe make cars have to text a phone number to beg the light the change. If cars had less annoying to the neighborhood horns you could have "horn recognition" and use the horn as a universal button.)
That's part of what pedestrian scrambles so great: you always wait for the pedestrian phase before crossing. There is no pedestrian crossing in the car phase.
The other great benefit is you can cross the diagonal (kitty corner).