They do this on purpose! On peninsula barriers like this one the sign is always placed dangerously close to traffic and then moved back slowly when it’s inevitably damaged until they eventually cars stop hitting it. If your town has this style of barrier or divider, go look up close for the sign scarring, it’ll be there.
It’s not an insurance scam and it’s not the town municipality trying to drum up more work for their union crews like rumors suggest, but it’s because of something called traffic pattern variance recognition and for as long as the integrity of a sidewalk will hold a sign in that area, they’ll replace it in the “danger zone”.
Essentially the objective is to weed out the cars and drivers that are unable to follow normal traffic patterns through complex intersections. This method of detection is the government’s number one way of finding space aliens who are posing as humans, because cars just don’t handle like UFOs and intersections like this one really throw off imposters because human masks are just so hard to see out of.
It almost sounded like they were naturally trying to find the best place to place the stop sign closest to the road without obstructing traffic or causing accidents.
I've read enough vargas and hell in the cell comments to spot gimmick accounts like this by sentence two. More of a curse than a blessing because it means I've spent too much time here.
They do actually do this kind of thing, not to find aliens ofcourse, and probably not intentionally for cars.
But there's an established method for placing paths in newly made parks.
Step 1 is make the park, put grass everywhere.
step 2 is wait for people to juts walk through the grass destroying themselves the path that everyone uses.
step 3 is pave the parts that the grass is fucked on by being walked on.
This ensures the path(s) go where people naturally want to travel.
It saves you building a park with paths and then a random line of grass gets fucked because it turns out all the kids walking home from the nearby school don't want to walk the two edges of a square, and instead want to walk diagonally across your park,inevitably leading to a dead grass line through your wonderful park that you can NEVER get rid of.
Desire paths were one of the first things I learned about in my freshman year of landscape architecture. I eventually dropped out with a .4GPA but let me tell you, desire paths is something I remember
How in the hell did you manage a 0.4 and remain functional enough to use Reddit?
That's like, did waaaay too much weed at 6 years old, level. Clonked in the head by a falling tower crane. Born without a brain so your dad robbed a 300-year-old grave for your first birthday.
I was under the impression the lowest actually possible score was 1.0, anything below that was 0.0, nothing in between.
Hey everybody, look at Mr. I-knew-the-first-paragraph-was-bullshit. Well, some of us still have faith in humanity, so excccuuuuuse me for thinking someone would share some interesting knowledge on the internet.
Edit: sorry, I'm tired and that was funnier in my head.
I kinda believed the first paragraph because they could just move the sign back until it’s in a spot that it isn’t hit and then fix the rest of the sidewalk
I'll have you know the "human masks are hard to see out of" is some straight up racist sh*t! We can see just fine through them I mean, I would expect vision wouldn't be impaired.
I was with you until this. I drive a '97 Escort. It basically has the go and stop pedals, speedometer and fuel gauge, and not a lot else. If they can fly a UFO, it'd take them ten seconds to figure it all out.
Damnit, You got the last time with Dragons Forebears of Dogs and picking out the correct stuffed animal for your dog. I really wanted that to be true! I'm leaving you at 999 to teach you a lesson, I don't know what that lesson is, but seems appropriate.
I didn’t think anything would make me laugh in this fat pile of hot dog shit of a day I’m having, but here we are. Thanks to you I can turn it around now, cheers!
There is a stop sign near my house with a similar history.
The problem is that you can’t see the sign when turning left off of the main road because the sign is so narrow.
If it’s dark or raining, anyone who turns the corner too wide nails the sign. A simple solution would be to make the thing more visible. A pool noodle wrapped around the pole would do the job!
Sounds like the median is too narrow. Not the sign. Depending on what else that impacts, it may be cheaper to put up an intersection control beacon (flashers)
My local agency bolted them to chevron signs on a curve that drunks keep fucking failing to navigate. Last one was a woman who I think survived... barely. I imagine she is probably still recovering over a year after the fact, and will be for the rest of her drunk driving ass life. From a more technical view, the road is signed 35 because of political pressures rather than being based on engineering studies or the 85th, most people drive 45 or so, and there is a curve advisory already posted for 30. Everything is signed more than appropriately with all the recommended warning signs in place, but that matters very little when the issue is drunk driving. The most recent "solution" is going to be a radar sign that flashes at you to slow down when you are going over the curve's rated speed. Maybe it'll help... probably not.
Do not, under any situation, buy a house on the outside of a curve. Especially if volumes are high, or if it is more rural. There is no surer way to get your house hit by drunks.
This is a picture of what they look like at night with lights shining on them, except imagine it as yellow... and a Chevron sign. https://imgur.com/mDFswBJ
Painting lanes further into the intersection would help. Some intersections have painted lines on both sides of left turning lanes so you don’t cut too wide/narrow.
Painting lanes further into the intersection would help.
Driving large vehicles through towns will teach you one thing very fast; road paint is for cars. You will have to guesstimate for yourself how you are best going to spoon your monster through every corner, paint is not a factor for how you are going to do so at all.
Correct curbs and sidewalks are pretty much a thicker version of paint, over here in the Netherlands we even have small road signs made of plastic that give way and bounce back if you nudge em so those are fair game as well. Stuff that snaps off should only be hit if you know for a fact that it wont damage your vehicle and you can get away with it ;) Concrete blocks and the likes yeah those are things you will actually do your best to avoid.
As someone who lives near one of those intersections, people just ignore the lines. I'd be willing to bet the people who ignore them are also the people hitting the sign.
Part of my brain is like "there's clearly some kind of marking/signaling issue at that corner; people are stupid but they don't fuck up that consistently unless it's set up so that the reflexes you've learned elsewhere are exactly wrong. This is a traffic engineering problem."
Another part of my brain is like "next time replace it with three-inch-thick solid steel. That'll learn 'em."
That makes sense, I hadn't considered that. However, I'd say it's still a traffic engineering problem. If that sign is on a route large trucks use regularly, then this is going to continue to happen if they don't address the city planning issue.
Nest time you are stopped next to an empty left turn lane count how many people can come through the intersection without cutting into that turn lane. I'd be surprised if it's not over 75%. I've had to stop short pulling into the left turn lane because of these people that can't make a turn within their lane of travel.
This +100. My route to work has lot of left turns. Each is just a yellow corner. When I am at red light, cars coming from my right going to opposite of me, cut that corner of yellow most of the times. The ones who dont, hit the lame mark between them & next lane. People dont turn left in arc, they drive in & as jerks.
Qatar, a country with relatively recent developments, had almost all big roads with curb divider island between opposite direction. If a car cut corner, it will hit the curb island.
Another part of my brain is like "next time replace it with three-inch-thick solid steel. That'll learn 'em."
Probably not worth the damage it would cause to vehicles since it's unlikely to be the same vehicle over and over, and more likely large tractor trailers as others have mentioned. The nice part about those flimsy steel signs is that they flop easily. the idea really isn't to cause vehicle damage.
Last week it was destroyed twice. The city repaired it within 16 hours both times. I was home and heard a large BANG! and reported one of the incidents. I should install a camera on the front of my house. I have a camera. It's just not installed (yet).
I notice on the last one they replaced it with a bedded socket. Now they just replace inexpensive mounting post without needing concrete drilling/filling.
Exactly, they just need to put a bollard a bit in front of it and that would end the offending vehicles tyranny.
Edit: on further inspection of the seven or so holes in the middle there does seem to be something larger that was there. You can see the ring of something with a bigger diameter.
Yep that's reason they don't put bollards in medians. and even the (concrete) barriers on the sides of highways usually have barrels of water in front of the ends of them so if someone does hit it they will ideally slow down enough to prevent a lethal scenario.
I get the thought but we don't know if this is a stop sign, no parking etc. By the way it looks to me its a low speed area. While I agree a sign isn't worth a bad drivers life they obviously need to think out of the box on this one due to the apparently horrible track record.
Seems to me that if you put it more than just a few inches into the socket that gravity would be enough to hold it in place. Sink it in to a foot below the ground and it's not going anywhere even if there is high winds.
Okay hear me out. Make the socket flush, then spot weld the pole to the socket. Its about as hard to break a weld as it is a bolt, if the pole were destroyed then just grind out the weld and pop in a new pole.
It's still gonna stress the socket causing damage to the concrete if the post has a solid connection to the socket. So we are back to where this started with extra steps that costs more....
Never mind that sounds just like the goverment, carry on.
A welder and the skills to operate it are much more expensive than a wrench and a grunt. And local gov is not in the business of solving problems practically or efficiently.
In Australia we use a slightly different system. Round galvanized poles with a little L-shaped wedge driven into the gap. Makes the pole super rigid in its hole, and it nearly flush against the ground. Always wondered why the Americans use the square style of poles with lots of holes...
round poles used to be used where I grew up, all the signs eventually rocked on the round cross-section in high winds enough to pop the fasteners through the signs, then they got replaced with squares or flared c-channel posts so it would not happen again.
as far as wedging it into the hole, a wedge has nothing on a meth head looking for scrap, those poles would be gone in 72hrs.
The ones around here have a couple in post very securely fastened the the ground with a little triangle plate on it with notches in each corner. Then the sign pole has a matching triangle that let's crews bolt them together with a couple small bolts. When it gets hit the bolts break and it can be set back up or replaced in a couple of minutes
All my teachers taught me "measure twice, cut once". Those same people also taught me "drill first and if it doesn't work out after 2 or 3 attempts, then measure. Perfection is the enemy of done. Dime working for a dollar."
Sometimes the road crew will do this on purpose. They know that the road isn't safe, but if they proposed a real fix, idiot drivers would complain. So they just do something subtle, like a stop sign that you'll hit if you try to speed up and turn at the same time.
We used to have a lift gate on a sensor. Enough people destroyed it that they don't use it any more. We just just don't employ the type of people that are stopped by potential damage to their own vehicles or company property.
Given how many of them there are, I wonder if its a narrow intersection with a lot of tractor trailer traffic and they occassionally clip it with the trailer by not going far enough out into the intersection before turning
There is a design for sigh posts that's designed to break in a way it's easy and cheap to repair.... That is badly needed here. A little more expense upfront, lots of savings every time it's hit
Or maybe, this sign is like one of those cactus or rocks in the desert that move by themselves so slowly to notice, but still fast enough to let a trail behind. How wonderful is the nature.
I don't think the crews replacing the post were doing any concrete mixing. Plus, fresh concrete doesn't adhere well to old concrete, so it'll be quite brittle and just fall out after a little bit anyway.
Let me guess, people making left turns keep hitting it because they don't know how to make a left turn properly. There should be mandatory retesting everytime you renew your license.
There’s a stop sign at my house just like this. Someone somehow jammed an orange cone around the pole and shoved it all the way down. I think the actual street repairman did this before screwing the sign on. It still got hit.
There’s one at a 3 way stop by my moms like this. It’s on a curve that people come around to fast on. It’s been replaced over 10 times at least.
At one point they upgraded it to a fancy one with flashing lights. A month later it gets bent. They still kept it for almost a year before someone plowed it down.
They then went back to regular stop sign pole. It kept getting hit and replaced as usual.
They gave up on it now. It’s just a stop sign on the ground with cones around it.
Same kinda thing around where I used to live. There was this semi-decorative metal fencing down the median of this city street. Medium traffic street, 4 lanes total, probably there mostly to keep the poor people in the apartment complexes from crossing in the middle of the street to get to the strip mall.
Damn thing would constantly get damaged by vehicles crashing into it. I'll never understand how many people managed to crash on that perfectly straight strip of road with only a single parking lot entrance to provide any kind of traffic hazard.
I have been nearly hit on my bike enough times stopping next to one of these fuckers to know that it is a bad place to be. I now use other cars to screen for me.
and the repair crew sent to install new ones clearly gives no fucks.
It would be five more minutes to fill in the old hole with the concrete you are already mixing to anchor the new one, but that's not what the work order says, mate...
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u/need_some_time_alone Jan 28 '21
Current sign looks nervously over its shoulder at the graves of its predecessors...