[lesuorac]

The alternating pairs is just convention and isn't actually law.

The actual law is that you need to complete stop first, yield to any vehicles already in the intersection, yield to the first car (tie goes to your right).

Which allows for an interesting scenario to occur.

1) East-bound truck arrives at intersection and stops first before proceeding into intersection.

2) South-bound bicyclist arrives at intersection and proceeds (illegally) without stopping.

3) West-bound Waymo arrives at intersection and stops but proceeds (now also illegally; as the cyclist is within the intersection) through the intersection.

https://law.justia.com/codes/california/2022/code-veh/divisi...

[mlyle]

Alternating pairs emerges directly from those rules. Once one person goes north, a non-conflicting person can go south. Then, the current east and west people have arrived before the new north and south people.

[lesuorac]

It doesn't though.

Unless the North & South people arrive at the intersection at the exact same time they must still come to a complete stop. While say the South person is stopping an East person could have finished their stop and since the North car has passed by them they can enter the intersection.

Sure as the intersection backs up it becomes very likely that the North-bound person will be blocking an East person from entering the intersection such that the South person can enter. But just because a car is coming at you in an intersection doesn't mean you can legally enter it.

By convention though, literally every East bound person is going to expect the South bound person to travel at the same time as the North bound one. My point is strictly that the law doesn't require this and under some circumstances the South bound person may be breaking the law.

[mlyle]

> But just because a car is coming at you in an intersection doesn't mean you can legally enter it.

I would argue you can; if you only have to yield to someone who is unable to enter the intersection for other reasons, you are free to go.

> By convention though, literally every East bound person is going to expect the South bound person to travel at the same time as the North bound one.

Sure; it's worth assuming that the Southbound person has slightly screwed up timing instead of forfeiting what would normally be "their turn".