'til I'm blue in the face

[Martin Cassini]

Taking it in turns – it’s how we behave as social beings. Main road priority, on which the traffic system is based, subverts the natural order. It imposes unfair rights-of-way, and puts the vulnerable road-user at a dangerous disadvantage. Most accidents are not accidents at all. They are events contrived by the rules of the road. Traffic lights exist to break the priority streams of traffic so that others can cross. Like other control measures that try to undo the damage caused by the original sin of priority, lights overlook the cancer at the heart of the system, and bring problems of their own. Remove the cancer of priority, and you remove the "need" for lights and the need for speed, enabling everyone to do what is natural and intrinsically safe: approach carefully, watch the road, and filter.