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if trains honk at every crossing (in the US), shouldn't cars be honking at every crosswalk?
(self.showerthoughts)
Train can't stop like a vehicle does.
this post was submitted on 27 Aug 2023
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I live in California; many drivers here make it seem like regular cars can't stop either the way they roll through stops.
Idk if this is more of a local thing but in Ohio we call rolling stops a California stop
I've always heard it called the "California Roll" from other Californians. I like the pun. A California roll is also a local kind of sushi.
California rolls (sushi) are common in mostly the entire US.
Sweden also has them
They are local like Hawaiian pizza is local to Toronto. They might have been created there but itnhas caught on elsewhere.
Cars in New Mexico appear to have brake failures at every stop sign, they slow down but do not stop.
When it done where I am at we call it a California stop. Explains where that name comes from that they actually have a saying for that type of "stopping ".
KY/OH here. It's not a Cali thing, it's an American thing. Almost daily I have people rolling through stop signs or just straight up not stopping at stop lights if they're turning right.
Story time: drove in Europe for the first time this year. Totally different. Lower speed limits even with that weird metric system. Way less lights and more round abouts and stop signs.
not stopped at stop lights if they're turning right
That's because it's actually allowed in the majority of the US
Well right turns on red are allowed in most of NA.
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Just to be pedantic, trains are vehicles.
To be fair, when your doing 40 and you are 50 feet from the crosswalk, you can't stop either.
To be fair, hitting meat bags on the road or a tree could make you stop in less than 40 feet.
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I heard it takes like 1 mile 1km for a train to come to a complete stop.
Trains have right of way. Cars do not have right of way at cross walks.
pedestrians should honk
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When I was in Nepal, busses would round blind corners on barely-two-lane cliffside roads - meaning 100+ metre cliffs above AND below - at full speed, and their only warning was just a bunch of honks. The problem is there's so much honking it's hard to imagine anyone can tell where it's coming from, especially given the people you're trying to warn are around the corner and can probably only hear you due to echoes coming from the far side of the valley.
The game for me became, count how many busses were destroyed at the bottom of the cliffs, or hanging precariously over the edge having punched through the concrete barrier, or tipped on their side in the lowlands, or just... fucking INTEGRATED with one another after a head on collision that definitely killed both drivers and anyone sitting in the driver's quadrant of each bus.
I definitely lost count, except for that last example of which I saw exactly one (1), and I learned that honking is no substitute for real infrastructure. Structural adjustment policies killed those people.
That’s the thing, I live near train tracks/station. The fucking train honks incessantly. There are like 4 or 5 intersections that train crosses in pretty quick succession, plus the station, so they just lay on the horn for a good mile. No one pays attention to it. It’s like the boy that cried wolf. It totally defeats the purpose of it’s trying to alert anyone to anything. Not to mention the noise pollution it needlessly creates. Idk who decided that was a reasonable solution, instead of putting up the people gates, but fuck them. That law needs to be completely abolished imo.
In addition to the whole 'a car is diffent from a train' aspect; trains don't always 'honk' in the US
Neither do they here (Austria) even though my driving instructor was adamant that they do. "You can trust that if there's no honk, there is no train."
Thanks, driving instructor, but I'd rather go with "if there is no train, then there is no train".
Trains only honk because they can't stop, so all they can do is warn. Cars should not be going so fast they can't stop on city streets. Also, trains always have the right-of-way, but cars never do, even on roads without crosswalks or sidewalks. They must always yield to all pedestrians in any situation.
No, it doesnt make sense for the following reason:
Trains have priority. Road users are required by law to yield to them.
Unless the crosswalk is signalized, cars do NOT have priority & are required by law to crosswalk users.
Fine then pedestrians should be honking at every crossing
Where I live, pedestrians have the right of way at crosswalks (fun fact: when this was introduced somewhere in the 70s, car drivers have been angry about it)
Serious question: are there places in the world that have marked pedestrian crossings (crosswalks), but vehicles DON’T have to give way to pedestrians?
In Prague, pedestrians officially have the right of way, but most drivers don't seem to know that.
Yeah, unfortunately that seems pretty normal in a lot of places.
Yes, Germany.
They have two types of pedestrian crosswalks. One of them is the standard "zebra crossing", where the whole crosswalk is maked with white stripes and there pedestrians have right of way.
The other one just has just dashes at the sides of the crossing, and here pedestrians have no right of way. But if these are present (same with the other type) pedestrians are not allowed to cross the road for iirc 50 meters left or right of the crossing. So it essentially turns the road left and right of the crossing into a "no crossing allowed" zone.
They do this at traffic lights, so that if the light doesn't work pedestrians don't have right of way. And sometimes they just do it to annoy pedestrians, because it's car-country Germany and fuck pedestrians or something.
Not long ago in Poland a pedestrian would have the right of way only after they were already on the crossing. So if you would get killed on a crosswalk that would be classified as intrusion and the driver would go scot-free
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What is glorious is riding high speed trains in other countries. They are built like our interstates, with all crossings either over or under. They don’t use their horn. It is just quit and smooth, and you can get up and walk around, get a tea, or use the restroom. It is far more comfortable than traveling by car.
Downvotes are from the light sleepers annoyed by car honks
Yes, but no, please no.
Please no. Can you imagine the cacophony that'd be?
I have heard that when cars were a rare thing in the Old West that drivers had to stop at intersections, get out, and fire a gun to warn any horse-powered cross traffic. It sounds like total bs but there have been stranger laws...
Only in the past handful of years was it no longer made illegal to sneeze in public here in Texas.
It was an old holdover law from when sneezing might spook someone's horse. Not enforced for obvious reasons, though.
Not related but man it is so nice to visit places where honking is rare. I am in PV Mexico alot and honking is rare even though driving is quite random and rules are only optional. Driving is actually fairly stress free as it is rare to see anyone angry.
Then you drive in Panama city, Panama. Still no one is angry but honking is continues. Don't turn on a blinker to lane change. Just honk and do it. Regardless of there is a space for you.
If you want even more nutjobs shooting each other in public, sure, go for it. 👍
When I took my divers ed class the instructor told us that honking should be used when passing in a two way street. Never seen anyone do it, tho a one finger salute is often given. Not really sure what I should do with the honk now.
You hush now sir! Things are quite loud enough as they are.
It's seems crazy to me that they are so many crossings over train lines in the US. I think they exist in the UK but they're rare. I remember driving over one when I visited family in Vermont and it was scary 😆
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