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People who don't know how traffic lights work
We've all seen this happen, right? An intersection with traffic lights that normally run in stop-and-go mode is, for whatever reason (equipment failure, planned maintenance, street closure, etc.), running in flashing mode. The major street has flashing yellow and the side street has flashing red.
And oftentimes, when that happens, I see drivers treating the intersection as a four-way stop. People on both streets will pull up to the line, stop, and expect each other to take turns.
It doesn't work that way! Whoever has the flashing yellow has right-of-way; you guys with the flashing red are supposed to sit and wait for a gap in traffic!
To make matters worse...a traffic light that's completely non-functional (for example, during a power outage) is meant to be treated as a four-way stop. The law requires that you stop at the line and take turns when there's no signal displayed.
But good luck finding anybody who does that--ironically, drivers do the exact opposite of the flashing scenario: they treat it as if those on the minor street must yield to the major street! And usually there are no consequences for getting it wrong, because if a police officer were nearby, they'd be directing traffic instead of writing tickets.
Comments
I don't usually find people treating flashing yellow lights as flashing red lights. Then again most of my experience with flashing yellow lights is driving to/from the airport late at night in suburban Connecticut, which basically means the people whom I see crossing flashing yellow lights are generally myself, myself, and myself.
And people probably don't treat non-functional lights as 4-way stops because they're not red. There's an association between red and stopping, but lack of a light makes that not come to mind.
Though if it's a small enough pair of roads intersecting it's probably not a huge issue. At major intersections, however, it's effectively enforced by default because everyone will be very wary of where so many other people are each going.
Traffic perplexes me.
I...don't think I've ever seen a broken intersection reverting to flashing-yellow. It always goes to four-way flashing red.
As for the completely non-functional case, we had a power outage hit about a quarter of town for the better part of the day several weeks ago. Not only was the traffic not a nightmare, but if anything, it was quite a bit nicer than usual. Everyone was stopping for each other, nobody was speeding (presumably because of added caution), and life went on pretty smoothly.
Ah, I should have mentioned that in my post...for some reason, when an intersection regularly goes into flash mode, as with those that are light on traffic late at night, people seem to be able to understand it just fine. From what I've seen, drivers only really get confused when it's unexpectedly flashing (as when it comes back online after a power outage or something).
You know, I've heard other people say that too. I wonder if it varies by jurisdiction...usually when I've seen it around here, the major street gets yellow, except on very small streets where the volume of traffic is about equal.
Maybe it's a big-city thing or a Midwest thing or something, but around here it seems to be sort of 50-50. At lighter times of day people will take turns like they're supposed to, but if it happens during a heavily traveled time of day, people like to just cruise on through...
We have a whole lot of completely unlighted intersections downtown. Right next to the courthouse too, so people know they'll get busted fast for misbehaving. So I guess "default to unlighted intersection" is just a natural response we do okay with.