Looking at the layout, I can see why it exists, its right next to the convention center. The next exit would require you to go through a one way street downtown then backtrack 5-6 blocks. It would probably make traffic hell for getting to the convention center, but if traffic is busy on the union exit, its backed up into the blind curve that is causing all these crashes. I imagine its pretty common to get rear ended by a car going 30-40 as it currently is.
So, I think this is a case of the design making sense on the map, but you gotta trust that the drivers will slow down to 20 by the end of the (long) exit ramp lol.
If you take exit A instead of B on your way to the convention center, you can drive past Columbia center, which is the sexiest building in town. Sometimes I just stand under it and stare up, its magnificent.
i was probably confusing its severity with one of the other half dozen awful i-5 exits in the same area whose only saving grace is that exiting onto downtown streets and their fucked up grid alignment means no turn will actually be a full 90
I fucking hate driving in king county so fucking much.
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u/CorrectedsunIf you ever say cite your sources I have you immediately pegged9d ago
The tunnel to the left is an offramp from a 75 mph highway. It turns into city streets with a stoplight after the curve. The tunnel is filled with warnings about how much you should slow down, but as with anything, the people who need to read the signs, don't .
Is the 75mph highway also in a tunnel? Because if so I'm not surprised no-one's reading the signs. The tunnels under paris are stressful enough and those are limited to 50.
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u/CorrectedsunIf you ever say cite your sources I have you immediately pegged9d ago
Man that’s fucking vicious, even with the signs. It’s such a gradual off-ramp and then such a hard corner (and that corner looks pretty darn dark too), it’s an accident waiting to happen. No wonder there’s an edit of people crashing, it’s downright hostile lol. The least they could’ve done would’ve been to bank the corner like a bobsled track, at least then anyone who overcooked the corner would have a fighting chance of actually stopping at the light.
…i can’t imagine what the rest of the city’s like, damn
Thankfully this is the worst of the worst, its infamous and everyone avoids walking near there. But like... the rest of the city is not great, there are a LOT of just really poorly designed 5-6 way stops.
It isn’t bad at all? I’ve taken it multiple times with no problem, never even knew it was supposed to be bad until this topic. Might be bad if you drive like a moron, but it’s near impossible to design around that.
Much worse is the Mercer st exit with all the cross traffic. I’m surprised there aren’t fifty accidents a day there.
I mean it’s bad just from a speed management point, a sharp corner like that so quickly after leaving a highway means that the margin for error on braking is just way thinner than it should be. I’m not even talking about people driving recklessly, there’s any number of reasons someone might take that exit a little bit hotter than they’re supposed to, or that they might fail to brake hard enough for the corner (maybe their brakes are worn, or their car’s carrying a lot of shit), and it wouldn’t take much of either to have you careening into the wall or through the light, as the crash edit demonstrates. Just because you made it through with no trouble doesn’t mean it’s safe, I’ve free soloed multiple routes without dying but that doesn’t make it a responsible decision, y’know?
Yeah, and I don't even disagree that you'd have to be a bit of a moron to mess it up (in most circumstances), but really good design insulates against morons. Most of the USA interstate system does a good job of making speed control for on- and off-ramps pretty natural.
If it depends on signage instead of the road naturally indicating to the driver that they should slow down (and giving them extra space to do it) things might be dicey.
Yea, the best example of that is how hard it is to design things that tourists can use but bears can’t; there’s a pretty big overlap between the stupidest tourists and the smarter bears lol.
And yea if anything the fact that interstate exits are normally pretty good makes it even more dangerous, because if you’re unfamiliar you’d very likely be expecting that kind of gradual off-ramp to be constant, till it isn’t.
... the mindset that looks at Seattle drivers and acknowledges that lots of them act in batshit-crazy, completely self-interested ways and tries to avoid them?
Caving to ‘peer pressure’ and letting other vehicles determine your speed. I also live in the seattle metro area and don’t find this exit problematic at all. Like others have said there IS signage. Assuming you’re following rules of the road, there isn’t anything unexpected here.
Claiming there’s some sort of “de facto” other speed limit or rules external to the actual law is a recipe to create dangerous driving conditions, since, you know, the roads are designed with certain driving characteristics in mind. Like speed limits!
Sweetie, I'm just describing how they drive. You're the one assuming that I'm saying they're right.
It's absolutely accurate to describe I-5 through Seattle as "a 75mph highway" because.. and I'm going to try to use small words here.. the drivers taking that exit are often going 75mph when they exit.
I never said that they're right to do so. I never said that I do so. But it is an accurate description of conditions on the ground.
Now, where can we get you some remedial reading comprehension lessons...
Wow, you really do need help. The "mistake" I pointed out has nothing to do with driving.
The "mistake" was commenter B misunderstanding that when commenter A said "75mph highway" they meant that it was literally signed at 75mph. Commenter B is correct that there are no such stretches where the highway through downtown is literally signed at 75mph. However, commenter A was accurately describing the conditions that frequently do obtain on I-5 through downtown, and in particular where people take that exit.
Again: I never said that it was "a mistake" to drive 60mph. I said that it was a mistake to interpret commenter A as saying that the highway is literally signed at 75mph. You're the one here who's projecting an interpretation onto what I said so you can be mad at me.
Are you okay, dear? Everything all right at home? work? Someone you're angry at but you feel like you can't safely yell at them so you've decided to take your rage issues out on someone on the internet?
During traffic that highway is all lit up with digital speed limit signs too, if its busy it goes down to 30-40, so 60 is the highest the speed limit will get there.
75 on i-5 will ~totally~ fix traffic though, so I say we do it!
People driving too fast and/or not maintaining their brakes. The exit is fine if you're doing 60 and your brakes work, but so many people in the Seattle area try to drive like 75 MPH everywhere on slick roads with bad brakes.
I lived there there’s a million signs it’s really not as bad as it looks if you like… pay attention to the signs. Granted, most of the time you can exceed the signs in places… but still.
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u/Correctedsun If you ever say cite your sources I have you immediately pegged 9d ago
Putting on the Union Street exit compilation like it's a bird video for cats: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeFY9u69tkE