[Karnickel]

I won't dispute it because of the general "If you've never seen a black swan, is that proof that none exists? (No)" fallacy, but speaking as a German, I cannot remember having seen one in Germany, ever. So even if one exists it's an exceedingly rare thing.

When I lived in the US I always found it unnecessary that everybody has to stop. In Germany we always have a "main" road and a "secondary" road, and those on the main road don't have to stop. That priority pattern is kept from major roads to tiny roads. Then there's the "right before left" rule when the roads are equal - creating a priority without signs and without "everybody has to stop" rule.

[klodolph]

In the places where I see four-way stop, there is some constant but not heavy traffic during parts of the day, so if you had a primary / secondary road with only a two-way stop, the secondary road would not flow well. However, the traffic was not high enough to warrant a signal.

This makes sense to me, and I don't see how other systems would be anything but worse. A signal would have a short cycle and only delay people during large parts of the day, a two-way stop would cause problems in one direction, it seems excessive to tear out a bunch of road to put concrete in, etc.

It is of course very natural that the roads in the US are built to completely different standards than Germany, given how incredibly different the layout of US cities are from German ones, broadly speaking.

[kuschku]

Almost every such intersection in Germany was replaced with roundabouts, afaik. Perfect use case for them.

[squiggleblaz]

Australia is more similar to the US than Germany, but we don't have four way stops here; they case is provided for by roundabouts. Even still perhaps we have less because we rarely have pure grids.

[nraynaud]

I went to check on google maps, I suspect I misremembered and it was a 4 way priority loosing (downwards triangle), but the road markings are mostly worn out (but I think they are 4 dashed lines, not continuous), and Germany being Germany, I can't use google street view.

St Peter Strasse / Von der Tann Strasse in Rorhbach in Heidelberg.

Sorry for causing a stir with my bad memory, I remembered that from my French point of view that would cause a deadlock.