I just don't remember this kind of thing being a problem in California or Ohio.

And I'm not really blaming the drivers, as this is something which I also do. Given the design of the roads and signals, you pretty much have to or else you're never gonna make that left turn. Even at that, it can take 2-3 full cycles of a light to get through if you're behind a dozen or so cars that are also turning left.

What's infuriating is that it'd be so easy to fix this with some minor electronics, without needing to create dedicate left-turn lanes. At intersections where it's a problem, install left-turn arrows , and stagger the timing of traffic in opposing directions.

So, assuming we start from a state in which all signals are red on the east-west directions, and the North-South has just changed to all-red:

1: East gets a combined Left Arrow and General green.

2: Wait 15 seconds, then take away the East Left Arrow and give West a General green.

3: Wait 30 seconds (or whatever is 15 seconds less than the normal green period would be), then give East a full red, and turn on West's Left Arrow green.

4: Wait 15 seconds, then give West a full red.

 

I guess it’s been a while since Ohio Joe...

Typical 2-3 cars because of the bizarre way they time the LH turn arrows. Depending on time of day could be 2 cycles easily. Worst offenders are the house moms in the Suburbans and Yukons or insert whatever the vehicle of the month is.

My pet peeve is people blowing through a subdivision stop sign at 25mph and doing 40 in that 25mph. My wife got hit on her bike last year because wife on phone with her hubby and drove right through the sign. Cop never issued a ticket because “well both could be at fault”.... $350 bike repair and thankfully my wife was wearing a helmet and otherwise only bruised.

 

I think the answer is using roundabouts instead of intersections.

I was in Zanzibar not too long ago. There are almost no traffic lights, most roads meet at roundabouts, people barely slow down while merging in and out of the massive traffic whirlpool, and no one bats an eye.
Took some getting used to, but hey, it works like a charm.

 

A few roundabouts popping up in the Midwest. Mention them to the locals and they think you’re a socialist....

 

We have a few diverging diamond intersections in atlanta. Genius. So many more cars go through the intersection on each cycle. Also GDOT is putting in a lot of roundabouts. There is one just up the street from my house. GDOT has apparently become enlightened.

 

Yeah we fixed this problem ages ago. It's called a Michigan left and it works fantastic.

 

New Jersey went on a program to eliminate circles years ago.

 

The largest problem that I have with "midwest roundabouts" is that they're too damned small. DOT engineers see a 4-way stop intersection with backed up traffic during rush hour and decide "hey, if we put a nickel in the middle of the intersection, pull all of the stop signs out, and ask people to not run over the nickel, we'll drastically improve traffic flow!!"

The one that has me the most up-in-arms is that there's a new area a few miles away from my house where the roads basically form a giant square (think "city block" sized area). Two of the sides are old roads that have been there awhile, and the other two sides are a single brand new road for a new commercial complex that they've built on a field that a farmer sold. Forever, the two sides of "old road" have met at a "T" intersection that has people backed up for a mile or more during peak rush hour - the intersection is the bottleneck.

In a stroke of [sarcasm]sheer genious[/sarcasm], they have put in 3 roundabouts - not at the corners though. Where the new construction meets the old construction at one end, and then two more roundabouts in the middle of the new construction link. They "fixed" the backed up "t" intersection by adding a left turn lane to the bottom of "T" (no oncoming traffic anyhow) where 90% of traffic turns left anyways.

If they would have, just for a brief moment, pulled their midwest heads out of their midwest asses, one of the traffic engineers with an IQ of at least 25 would have realized that they already had the perfect roundabout --> it would have been most appropriate for the entire square to be one-way traffic, and each connected roadway should have been a "Y" connector with a dedicated turn out lane, a dedicated turn in lane and a triangle island in the middle.

After a map review, there are actually quite a few "roundabout clusters" in the Columbus area where small minds have prevailed.

 

Hehe.

In the town where I grew up in Florida, the county commission (there is no city) is infamous for blowing the whole year's allocation for road-building on doing one, single, grandiose project which looks beautiful but has minimal utility, while ignoring the other 99% of the town's decaying infrastructure.

(Examples would be re-modeling a half-mile stretch of the side roads along US 41, with center dividers, palm trees, paving stones, and a park bench (located in the middle of a traffic island, mind you) in a way which creates a really ackward situation when transitioning into and out of the "beautiful" section from the rest of it. (My assumption is that one of the comissioners has a friend who owns a business along the "beautiful" section.).)

Anyway, the reason I chuckle is that during the 2014-15 road-building season, roundabouts were en-vogue in Port Charlotte. As a result, the reconstruction of a two mile section of Edgewater Dr, a very lightly-trafficked road well outside of any major commute routes (which took longer, and cost more, than the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge) includes the only three roundabouts in the whole county, each of which is about as large in diameter as the saucer section of the USS Enterprise. Accidents at those intersections have gone up, as the locals, as a matter of pure demographics, have lower-than-average eyesight and cognitive capacity.

 

I love roundabouts. Always see them as a challenge to get through as quickly as I can (sans traffic of course). Had a cop pull me over once in my Speed6, I think he thought it was kids driving and was going to teach them a lesson. He was a little put off when he saw me, and apologetic for having to give me a ticket for an expired tag (had just gotten home and my wife hadn't renewed it). Hey, it's just a suggested limit when the sign is yellow. I do agree most of the US ones are too small.

bahurd is right, I live just south of him and there are a lot of red-light runners in the area. I have almost gotten hit several times going from the two lane road to my subdivision onto the four lane state road at a light, people just don't even pause (and that road has a 55 mph limit).

Close to me they have made some of the left turn lights go to flashing yellow once the left turn interval is done, so folks don't have to sit there as long. When it was first instituted I saw several accidents where people just didn't understand what that meant. The more "Driver aids" are added to cars, the more people switch their brains off. And if texting and driving is so distracting, why is vehicle connectivity touted as such a selling point?

 

We don't get red light runners here like some parts of the country and I'm not sure why. Many red light cameras were added around the state in the last 10 years but a lot have been removed lately. $152 a pop cured some of the habitual runners, I guess.

There was an uptick in rear endings when the installation of the cameras first occurred. People who had time to make the yellow were making panic stops and getting hit.

 

When the light turns yellow, and you know you're right on the edge of being able to make it so you're trying to make a split second decision, and suddenly you see the brake lights of the guy in front of you, who is closer to the intersection than he is to you...



This has been happening more often to me lately. So disappointing.

 

Yeah, when they put that first one in at 285 & Ashford-Dunwoody/Perimeter Mall, you'd thought everyone forgot how to drive lol.

 

Serious question:

I have a '99 with roughly 140K miles on the clock.
The engine, suspension and brakes have far, far less miles on them.
The car has a 5 speed and a 4.1 diff.

The diff has a faint whine at low speeds, in gear and with no load on it. That sorta concerns me.
I also have considerably more torque with the new twin turbo setup.

A 6 speed trans and 3.63 gears are impossible to come by where I live.
So, I was thinking about ordering them new from Mazda.
The way I look at it, the expense is pretty acceptable compared to buying a new car, and a new trans+diff combo will practically make my car new again.
Also, it will be a stronger setup with lower rpm levels for fast cruise. (There are times when I just cruise along at 90-100 mph)

The downside is the cost. I will be looking at a small fortune... But they will be new parts.

What do you think?

 

What are the practical constraints of having a Euro / N.A. friend obtain the parts, and shipping them to you? (Assume that we don't want to violate any customs / import regulations.) Consider the possibility of buying used parts off of a wrecked vehicle.

For reference, I bought a 3.626 diff out of a wrecked Mazda 626 for about $250 a few years ago. I never got a chance to use the ring & pinion, and wound up selling them for cost.

 

Joe, when you figure out the cost of shipping + customs fees + VAT, it just adds way too much to a seemingly attractive cost.
Shipping to this part of the world went up considerably over the past couple years.

Also, shipping an entire transmission is nothing like handing a small package over the post office counter.
You need to make a proper crate, arrange freight forwarding and then physically drop it off at their location.
99 per cent of forum/ebay/CL sellers would not even bother with all that.

Or, I can just make a little smoke come out of one of the high limit cards, and make payments on it for a while.
(There's a pretty good chance I could "convince" Mazda to give me some discount, too.)

For reference, I am roughly looking at one year's gross minimum wage...

 

Is your diff shielded from the exhaust heat as it passes by?

 

Not particularly.
I thought
a) the exhaust itself cools down somewhat by the time it reaches the back of the car, and it does not sit too close to the diff,
b) there is enough turbulence and cold air back there, where radiating heat will never be able to offend the diff, and
c) the diff is not connected to heat generating stuff like the trans itself, so it can deal with whatever heat the diff gears can generate...

 

My infrared heat gun measured 250 degrees at the diff on a hot day at the track at only 200 wheel horsepower without shielding. Normal daily driving around town would actually boil the gasoline in the fuel tank without shielding once it was down to about one-third tank. Once I determined that I went on a mission to shield everything. If it is hot enough to boil gasoline right next to the differential when driving around town, that's too much heat.

Even the factory exhaust for 120 horsepower has shielding for the diff and fuel tank. That's just my two cents.

 

Which is, what about 5,000 Lira?


Some companies have stupid names. Like Altria. Meaningless.

Others have names which are both cool and also tell you exactly what the company does. Like Combustion Engineering and Energetic Devices Inc.