I'm fine with getting rid of senseless prohibition but a lot of signs don't have to do with safety but with flow control.
The only thing that keeps downtown Oakland from becoming a complete mess is that the main arteries have the lights set so that you can (at the appropriate speed) get through without hitting more than a couple red lights. Without that, each intersection is an uncontrolled four-way stop. What will happen is either everybody stops at every intersection (horrible) or the dominant direction never stops and cross traffic can't get across.
Sometimes the small politenesses are counteracted for the overall greater good. As another example, there are reasons we want pedestrians to cross at intersection: because then we aren't surprised by them. The closest I've ever come to killing another human being was one time driving down a four-lane divided road slightly behind the car in the left lane. He started to slow, which I didn't notice, in the middle of very long block and waved across a pedestrian standing on the divider. I never saw the person, I never really realized that the other car was coming to a stop, and all of a sudden the pedestrian was in front of me. Yes, several people did several things wrong that wouldn't have happened ideally. But reliable expectations can be a good thing.
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