DriveSmartBC - Yield Signs

[skidmark]

Some drivers don't seem to realize that a yield sign requires them to do something laments a reader. They zoom right by and force their way into traffic as if the sign wasn't even there. Don't they realize that they can't do this?

The Motor Vehicle Act is very definite about what a driver must do. It says that if two vehicles approach or enter an intersection from different highways at approximately the same time and there is a yield sign, the driver of a vehicle facing the sign must yield the right of way to all other traffic.

The key words in the last paragraph are "all other traffic." This isn't just the traffic in the lane that you are going to try to enter. Traffic includes pedestrians, ridden or herded animals, vehicles, cycles and other conveyances, either singly or together, while using a highway to travel.

So, when you approach a yield sign, you must be prepared to stop if necessary. Don't focus only on the vehicles in the lane you intend to enter as yield signs often occur at crosswalks. You must watch on your right for pedestrians as well.

Reference Links

[slammer111]

The really bad ones (and I'd say City of Vancouver wasn't too bright in putting these in) are roundabouts where a major road and a minor road intersect. Blenheim Street comes to mind. All 4 directions have a Yield sign approaching the roundabout.

Half the traffic does things correctly, and allows traffic in on the right side. The other half assumes that they have the right of way as they are on the major street.

I could swear people were more careful in general back when Vancouver had a lot more uncontrolled intersections..

[Soundy]

Roundabouts are a problem in general, because road designers in BC have started using them everywhere the last few years, but nobody here has any training on how they're supposed to be used. Most have signs explaining it fairly clearly, but nobody bothers to read the signs anyway.

One my wife sees regularly coming off the Golden Ears Bridge into Pitt Meadows, she goes into one roundabout, makes a left, then over an overpass, then through another... every other day, there's some clown who comes flying off the side road into the first, looking right at her coming in from the left but not even slowing down... then coming to a stop at the next one, even when there's no traffic in it, and not even an entrance to the right.