{"id":2860,"date":"2005-05-18T13:50:25","date_gmt":"2005-05-18T17:50:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/vardibidian\/2005\/05\/18\/2860.html"},"modified":"2018-03-12T16:50:03","modified_gmt":"2018-03-12T21:50:03","slug":"confusion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2005\/05\/18\/confusion\/","title":{"rendered":"Confusion"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Y’all know that Your Humble Blogger is not a very good driver, so perhaps you can help me out, here. There’s an intersection in Williamsburg called College Corner, or more often Confusion Corner, which is a sort of Y, with no traffic light. That actually doesn’t describe it very well, so I’ll describe it in tedious detail, and perhaps y’all can look at a map<\/a> which might help, but might actually be misleading.\n

Technically, the corner is the intersection of Jamestown Road, North Boundary Street and South Boundary Street. However, most of the traffic coming in to the intersection from the south is actually coming from Francis Street, which dead ends into South Boundary about a dozen car lengths from Confusion Corner. Because of a well-placed stretch of one-way, all<\/I> of the traffic coming in from the north is coming from Richmond Road, which dead ends into North Boundary about two car lengths from Confusion Corner. So I’ll describe it as the intersection between Jamestown, Richmond, and Francis; that’s the way I think about it. If you are following on the map, please ignore Duke of Gloucester Street, which is pedestrian-only, and affects the corner only by making sure that there are lots of pedestrians aiming to use the crosswalks on each of the roads.\n

Most of the car traffic is coming in from the west along Jamestown and heading to Richmond (north or northwest). That traffic has the right of way: no yield sign, no stop sign. A car heading to Francis (east or south) from Jamestown takes the cutout and yields. Traffic heading in from Richmond has a yield; a car turning right is really yielding only to pedestrians, as the cars with the right of way are left-turning on their outside. A car heading from Richmond to Francis is yielding to cars from Jamestown (turning left, but with the right of way) as well as pedestrians and any car already in the intersection turning from Francis to Jamestown. Traffic heading in from Francis has a stop sign. Cars heading to Richmond are stopping for cars from Jamestown (which have the right of way) and pedestrians; cars heading to Jamestown are stopping for cars from Jamestown (which have the right of way), cars from Richmond (which have a yield), and pedestrians.\n

Got it?\n

Now, about ten times a week, I am in a car heading from Francis to Jamestown (from east to west, that is). This is my experience: After turning from Francis into Confusion Corner, I get in the left (turn only) lane, and keep an eye out for cars coming in from Jamestown. If there are no cars coming, I check for cars coming in from Richmond. If there are no cars there, fine, I go. If there’s a car heading in to the intersection, fine, I wait. Usually, though, there is a car stopped and waiting. Well, and that’s fine, too, that car has the right of way, and I wait until he has gone, and then (if there is still a gap in traffic on Jamestown) I slip in behind him.\n

Most days, there is another car behind that car. Do I have the right of way over that other car, even though it has a yield and I have a stop?\n

To make it more confusing: Richmond-to-Jamestown is a pretty sharp angle, say 60 degrees. There’s a wall and a lot of trees along the inside, so there’s no way to tell from about four car lengths outside the intersection whether you are going to be able to slip through or whether you will have to wait. Further, the boundary in question is the boundary between the College of William and Mary and Colonial Williamsburg; I would guess that a fifth or more of the cars going through the corner are doing it for the first time. Some of them are lost, some of them are just looking for somewhere to park, and some of them are extremely elderly (for drivers). A higher percentage of all of those than in most intersections of my experience, even of most intersections in Williamsburg. I can’t assume that anybody coming in to the intersection from any direction knows which roads have which signs. If an intersection is four-way stop, there’s a sign for that; there’s no sign for yield-and-the-people-facing-you-have-a-stop or the-people-on-your-left-have-a-yield-and-the-people-on-your-right-have-a-stop-but-you-got-nuthin’.\n

So. Generally, I just do it the old-fashioned way where I guess what the fellow coming from Richmond will do, and try to stay out of his way. Or try to make it clear what I will do, so he can stay out of my way. Or, ideally, both. And, I should say, I’ve never had an collision or a near-collision there, nor even seen a near-collision, I think. So I’m not too worried. But I’d like to know: who has the right of way?\n

chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek<\/I>,
-Vardibidian.\n<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Y\u2019all know that Your Humble Blogger is not a very good driver, so perhaps you can help me out, here. There\u2019s an intersection in Williamsburg called College Corner, or more often Confusion Corner, which is a sort of Y, with…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[201],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-navel-gazing"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2860"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2860\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17413,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2860\/revisions\/17413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}