Asklemmy

I know in some places, like Texas, they seem to presume that you have a tall truck. Anyone with even a normal-height vehicle is thereby put at a severe disadvantage, especially when you try to see past the tall truck that has pulled way far FORWARD past the line, just to stop at a red light.

i.e., it is for measuring the size of one's dick, even (especially?) for women drivers. Learn to swing it proud, or else never get anywhere in those places!

At a guess, these are for pedestrian crossings. The idea is that you come to a stop before the line, then push out to where you can see cross traffic, then go. Shouldn’t cost more than a couple seconds and is way better than charging right up through where pedestrians might reasonably step out before looking both ways.

And yeah, sometimes these are in places where you might not expect pedestrians, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be pedestrians. Especially in the US where infra is terrible. Moreover, these things are often governed by regulations that hold for all intersections rather than having different rules for different roads depending on whether you think pedestrians are likely to be there or not.

In fact, I’d argue that the fact that you don’t expect a pedestrian to be at a certain intersection is a good reason to have more regulations to encourage drivers to watch out for pedestrians, not less.

I see it a lot where there shouldn’t be any pedestrian activity.

This is a carbrained perspective. If an intersection is designed for cars to the exclusion of other uses, then others are unlikely to use it, which perpetuates car dependency. Even if all cars were electrified, car dependency would still be a massive problem in the US.

I think it really depends upon where you live, in my area we don’t really have a problem with trees or bushes at the corners. We usually have a bigger problem with large vehicles parking too close to the corner. Making it impossible to see around them.

Depending on how big the vehicle is it how wide it is I can be a fair amount into the intersection before I can see down the road. Which is really stupid. If you have a large vehicle don’t park at the corner. This also goes for parking lots, if you have a large vehicle do not park in the end spot as you make it impossible to see around you and you’re going to cause an accident.

I live in Minnesota by the way. We don’t really have a problem with bushes trees or hedges at the corners.