The Intersection Where They Removed the Stop Signs

In 2009, the town of Drachten in the Netherlands tried something radical. Traffic engineers removed nearly all the stop signs, traffic lights, and lane markings from a busy intersection. The theory was simple: drivers would self-regulate. They would naturally look out for one another.

For a while, it seemed to work. But residents noticed something unsettling. The strongest drivers — the ones in larger vehicles, the ones most confident — began to dominate. Pedestrians hesitated at curbs. Cyclists yielded even when they had the right of way. Without shared rules, the most aggressive simply took what they wanted, and everyone else learned to get out of the way.

The book of Judges reads like a nation that pulled down its stop signs. After Joshua's generation died, Israel entered a long, dizzying spiral. Ehud's assassination. Jephthah's horrifying vow. The Levite's concubine dismembered and mailed across twelve tribes. Each story more disturbing than the last, each one unthinkable at Sinai.

The final verse lands like a coroner's report: "In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes."

That word "right" is the tragedy. Nobody thought they were doing wrong. Every act of violence, every compromise, every brutality felt justified to the one committing it. The human heart, left to its own compass, does not drift toward Eden. It drifts toward Gibeah.

Israel needed more than better intentions. They needed a King.