When Did Traffic Signs Become Optional?

A Mom Rant about the Auto Safety in Semi-Rural America

Photo by Daisy D on Unsplash

I hit four stop signs on the route from my home to my son’s daycare.

Four.

It is only about a 10-minute drive. Within that drive, I see rolling stops at no less than half of the legal stops I have to make.

In the United States, rolling through a stop sign is illegal. The traffic laws, in all 50 states, require a “complete cessation of all movement”. That means the speedometer must hit 0 mph.

How do you know if your vehicle has come to a complete stop? The vehicle rocks back slightly at the end of your braking.

At the time of publication of this article, I have two littles under two. Both are in rear-facing car seats, one on each side of my car’s back seat. I have always been a cautious driver. The joke in my family is that if you want to get somewhere the slowest, have Marisa drive. Now that I have a car seat on either side of my car, I am extra aware of my driving, but especially of the drivers around me. I can only control my driving, not theirs.

I started noticing this habitual rolling-stop behavior while I was pregnant with my second. Cars would cut ahead of me in the unspoken stop-sign order because I would take the three extra…