Stop signs are self-explanatory – they spell out what you’re supposed to do when you encounter one. In practice, drivers are not always following the letter of the law.
Stop signs are self-explanatory - they spell out what you’re supposed to do when you encounter one. In practice, drivers are not always following the letter of the law.
NBC Connecticut Investigates looked into the frequency of crashes at stop sign intersections and found out, it hasn’t really been studied.
So we put some intersections to the test.
We staked out five intersections in cities and towns around the state. What our cameras captured time and time again were vehicles rolling past stop signs.
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Some drivers at least slowed down, while others blew right through the intersection, including what appeared to be a state police car and a Connecticut paratransit van.
Our cameras recorded more than 2,300 vehicles over five hours.
Investigations
Based on what we saw, roughly 24% of drivers came to a full stop. Nearly 71% did a rolling stop, and 5.5% did not stop at all.
As a traffic safety measure, stop signs are a double edged sword, according to Eric Jackson, executive director of the Connecticut Transportation Safety Research Institute (CTSRC).
“Most of our stop signs are at lower speed, lower traffic volume roadways, so there's not as much of a focus on those, as opposed to our high-speed, high-volume roadways,” Jackson said. “But at the same time, it's where we see a lot of our pedestrian crashes are occurring.”
Jackson said these types of crashes are becoming more frequent, and the injuries more severe.
Thankfully, NBC Connecticut Investigates did not see any crashes during our test.
Jackson said research from CTRSC shows since 2015, 101 pedestrians and 101 bicyclists were reported struck by a vehicle running a stop sign.
It is a daily concern for Danni Ricard, who walks her daughter to school in New London every morning. She said she has come close to getting hit a few times.
“A car came particularly close to me, within less than a car length, and my arm was out and I was scared. My daughter was with me, and we were in the crosswalk, but the car just kept getting closer, and I froze up. Didn't know what to do, so I just put my arm out, and they stopped eventually, but it was very scary,” she said.
As for possible solutions, some of them are pretty simple, like making the signs bigger, raising them higher off the ground, and putting reflectors on each side of the sign.
The Connecticut Department of Transportation started making some of those improvements in late 2023 at intersections without traffic signals. You can find the full list of projects here.
“And even at some of these really bad intersections, they'll put stop signs on both sides of the roadway to really try and grab the attention of drivers so they're not flying straight through that intersection,” Jackson said.
A more complex solution involves converting an intersection into a roundabout, which has been shown to significantly reduce fatal and serious injury crashes.
There are currently more than 30 roundabouts in the state and CT DOT said there are more than a dozen planned in the years ahead.
