Who Goes Next?
Nantucket tests another four-way stop
AI-generated illustration. But if you’ve driven the Surfside Road, Atlantic Avenue, S. Prospect Street, and Sparks Avenue intersection in summer, you know this exaggerated scene isn’t far from reality: four drivers, four waves, and everyone insisting the other person go first.
Claude.ai
Nantucket has many things: cobblestones, ferry traffic, and roads designed long before anyone imagined August traffic volumes.
What it does not have is a single traffic light.
Instead, the island has developed its own traffic system — eye contact, hesitation, and the occasional hand wave through an intersection. Now the Select Board is considering adding another piece to that system.
Town staff have asked the board to approve a pilot four-way stop at the intersection of Surfside Road, Surfside Drive, and Miacomet Road, beginning in April. The proposal follows a traffic safety evaluation funded by MassDOT and is tied to Article 35 at this year’s Annual Town Meeting, where voters will decide whether the stop signs should become permanent.
The Select Board is expected to discuss the proposal Wednesday, March 11 at 5:30 p.m. during its regular meeting at the Public Safety Facility Community Room, 4 Fairgrounds Road. The meeting will also be available for remote participation via Zoom.
Today the intersection works a little differently.
Drivers traveling along Surfside Road do not stop. Only vehicles coming from Miacomet Road and Surfside Drive face stop signs. The proposed pilot would change that, requiring all directions to stop. Town staff say the trial would allow officials to study traffic flow and gather public feedback before the Town Meeting vote.
Nantucket’s unofficial traffic experiment
If the idea sounds familiar, it’s because Nantucket already has something like it.
The intersection of Surfside Road, Atlantic Avenue, S. Prospect Street, and Sparks Avenue functions as a sort of four-way stop — though on busy summer afternoons it can feel less like traffic engineering and more like a social experiment.
Drivers pause. Someone waves another car through. Another driver waves someone else through. Eventually someone commits. Locals know the rhythm. Visitors often do not.
In July and August, the question “who goes next?” becomes a small moment of negotiation repeated hundreds of times a day.
Why this intersection
The proposed change at Surfside and Miacomet comes after a traffic safety evaluation identified the intersection as a concern.
Officials say the goal is to reduce crash risk and improve safety, even if the added stop signs may also slow traffic along Surfside Road — one of the island’s main routes to popular south-shore beaches.
Whether the solution improves safety or simply adds another moment of negotiation to Nantucket driving is something the April pilot is meant to answer.
A small decision, a familiar question
For now, the island’s traffic system remains what it has always been: part engineering, part improvisation, and part understanding that on Nantucket, getting somewhere may take a little longer than the map suggests.
And if the new four-way stop is installed, drivers may soon find themselves doing what Nantucket motorists have done for generations: Pause. Look around. And decide who goes next.
- Carlos Mendoza
Below Deck Contributor
3/10/26
Who Actually Goes First
The rules for a four-way stop are actually simple. In theory.
1. First to stop goes first.
If you arrive and stop before everyone else, you have the right of way.
2. If two cars arrive at the same time
The driver on the right goes first.
3. Opposite directions
Cars facing each other can both go if they’re going straight or turning right.
4. Left turns yield
Drivers turning left must yield to oncoming traffic going straight.
5. Pedestrians always win
Drivers must yield to people crossing the street.
Simple enough — until four cars arrive at the same time in summer.
At that point, human psychology tends to take over. Drivers try to be polite. They make eye contact. Someone waves another driver through. For an interesting take on the psychology behind this, see this short piece in Psychology Today.
On Nantucket, this has evolved into the island’s unofficial traffic rule, where one driver waves another through, who waves someone else through, who waves someone else through.
Eventually, someone goes.
Traffic engineers actually discourage this. Four-way stops work best when drivers follow the predictable order of arrival, not gestures.
Of course, that assumes everyone remembers the rules in the first place — which can be a challenge for visitors encountering their first four-way stop somewhere between the ferry and Surfside Beach.
Perhaps the solution is simple.
Just install a small electronic screen on each stop sign flashing the instructions:
FIRST TO STOP → GO
TIE → DRIVER ON RIGHT
IF STILL CONFUSED → WAVE POLITELY
Which, come to think of it, is pretty much what happens already.
- CM