What a four-way stop expresses is the equality of the drivers who meet there. It doesn’t matter what you drive. For it to work, no deference is required, no self-denial. Precedence is all that matters, like a water right in Wyoming. Except that at a four-way stop on the streets of Rancho Cucamonga everyone gets to take a turn being first.

The underlying theme here is nothing less than the importance of  rational games playing to a functioning society. As poker players, we tend to focus on game theory’s competitive applications in zero-sum situations, but game theory is equally as applicable to cooperative interactions that realize non-zero-sum benefits. (For more on this subject, see my review of Robert Wright’s Nonzero.)

In fact, I just record a video for Poker Savvy Plus yesterday in which I used traffic lights as an example of a Nash Equilibrium. The really remarkable thing about the four-way stop is that it is largely self-governing, as opposed to the traffic light, where drivers obey orders from (literally) on high. Yes, there are rules for how to behave at a four-way stop, but their application in a particular situation are almost always left to the individual judgment of the drivers. There is no flashing light or other signal to tell you when it is your turn and when you must defer.

Yet it works, and traffic flows. Contrast this with the roundabout, which is nasty and brutish, if not solitary or short.

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