I had an absolutely terrifying experience today driving around Austin.
Recently, a major 4 lane road (Howard Lane for anyone familiar with the area) was extended well east of town. That in itself is a good thing. What I did not expect was to encounter an intersection with ANOTHER major 4 lane highway (Harris Branch Parkway) without a traffic light!
Our road did have a stop sign, so I though OK, they haven't installed the light yet, so it's a four way stop, right? WRONG!!!!
We had a stop sign but the cross traffic did NOT. This meant that any car wishing to cross the intersection along Howard Lane would have to dash through four lanes of traffic on Harris Branch from a dead start and HOPE that they could make it without being hit. And this was at about 5:30 pm, so the cross road had a decent amount of traffic moving along at about 55 mph.
Since this is (after all) Texas, none of the cross traffic was about to slow down or allow anyone to cross ahead of them. The result was a line of about twenty cars on Howard attempting to dash across Harris Parkway, one by one, without anyone ending up in an accident. Somehow, by a miracle, there wasn't an accident while I was there. I did get through OK, but my heart was in my throat. I would have preferred trying to race across a railroad crossing ahead of a train; at least I can see where the train is and it's not going to suddenly change lanes.
It is staggering how stupid TxDOT can be sometimes. Someone will have to get killed before anyone notices this problem, apparently.