Country roads.

I was walking around a country road in Pennsylvania with large economy size dog Tralfaz when I noticed something that made me curious.

I couldn't figure out why the intersection up ahead was supposed to be dangerous. I'd been there before. It's a two-way stop with pretty good visibility in either direction. To your right is a downward slope, but it seems to me that only pea-soup fog, exceptionally bad ice, or the Dukes of Hazzard driving up the hill would make it dangerous.

I wondered if the sign was just a means of the local highway department using up its budget so it wouldn't see a cut the next year. The irreplaceable Mark Steyn has had some fun with America's stop-sign statism over the years: "I quickly appreciate being on a country lane and able to see the country, as opposed to admiring rural America’s unending procession of bend signs, pedestrian-approaching signs, stop signs, stop-sign-ahead signs, stop-sign-ahead-signs-ahead signs, pedestrian-approaching-a-stop-sign signs, designated-scenic-view-ahead signs, parking-restrictions-at-the-designated-scenic-view signs, etc."

And sure enough, we have one of those great "Stop Ahead" signs, because it's not enough to tell drivers to stop anymore. We have to be alerted to start stopping so we can stop completely at the stop sign. Before we stop stopping. And here is the stop sign itself.

hooray

The speed limit is set at a leisurely 35, as is typical for American town and rural roads that are not main thoroughfares. 

After looking hither and yon, there was only one thing I spotted in the intersection that would indicate any particular danger to the intersection.

Yeah, that could have something to do with it.