Michigan: Traffic Light Out — It’s a Four-Way Stop, Officially

A new bill was passed in Michigan that, to be honest, I thought was already a law. If you approach an intersection with malfunction traffic lights or lights with no power, you must treat the intersection as a four-way stop.

According to Fox 2, the current law says to treat those intersections as a right-of-way intersection, not a four-way stop. This new bill is supposed to make these intersections safer. According to Fox 2, The Michigan State Police tweeted that dark intersections should be treated as right-of-way intersection, starting the conversation for the new law. That basically means the road with the heaviest traffic drives through the intersection while the road with less traffic stops and waits for traffic to clear. That seems very archaic and wild, wild, west to me. Who determines what road is the busiest? If it is the intersection of Miller and Linden, what direction would stop?

I always thought the four-way stop rule applied when traffic lights are out, but now it is official. I think most people were already treating dark intersections as four-way stops, but now we all have clarification.