You're coming up to a stop sign on a quiet residential road. There's barely anyone walking around, and before you can even think twice, you're rolling through the stop line instead of keeping your foot down on the brake. It's harmless; no one is around, anyway. You've done this plenty of times before. How dangerous can rolling stops even be?
While you might think it's perfectly fine to do it, there's a reason why rolling stops are serious traffic violations, and why you should never do them. Let's break down the consequences one small shortcut can bring.
Automated Shortcuts
What is a rolling stop? A rolling stop is when a driver doesn't come to a complete stop at a stop sign, and instead slows down just enough to scan for traffic before "rolling" over the line. Whereas the law states that all drivers should stop completely at the line and wait for three seconds while scanning the intersection thoroughly before proceeding slowly, many don't follow this rule at all. In fact, rolling stops are so normalized that most drivers don't even think of it as a traffic violation.
And this doesn't come as a surprise. When you're so used to driving a certain way, your brain automates many of the processes and maneuvers you'll do on the road. You know you should examine each intersection before crossing it, but once your brain has learned to treat some sections of the road as "low-risk," muscle memory kicks in. After all, nothing bad happened all the other times you did a rolling stop, so why should it matter if you don't follow the actual rule? Fun fact: this phenomenon is what psychologists call the "normalization of deviance"—when you gradually become desensitized to deviant practice because it hasn't yet produced any negative consequences.
Split-Second Decisions
But why are rolling stops dangerous? After all, it's not like you're not scanning the intersection—you still are, even if it's quick. Why shouldn't you use this shortcut if it saves you time, considering you're still checking out for pedestrians and hazards as you glide past the line?
The danger here isn't that you're not checking your surroundings, but that you're doing it too quickly to be considered safe or effective. Your landscape can change in a second, which means if you're not coming to a full stop, your reaction time is reduced, your mental picture of the road is incomplete, and you're more likely to cause accidents. You might, for example, look to your left for cars while rolling out, not realizing that a pedestrian is about to cross the intersection. Drivers who do fully stop at the line and follow the traffic rule give themselves enough time to understand the scene around them and react accordingly.
Chain Reactions
Performing a rolling stop also encourages other drivers to do it. And seeing others do it makes us feel like we're allowed to continue doing it, too. This then creates a dangerous chain reaction that becomes so normalized that coming to a full stop is seen as odd.
It's important to note that while rolling stops might seem like they save you time, they only do so by a fraction. It only takes around three seconds to fully stop and scan the intersection before pulling out, which means it's at most one-and-a-half seconds longer than a rolling stop. But in that time, you'd get a better sense of your surroundings and be able to react safely. Is saving one-and-a-half seconds really worth it?
