There are situations where transitives and intransitives are switched without any clear reason. For example, a transitive verb is usually used to describe a situation like this:
タクシーが街を流す
rather than the logically more reasonable intransitive version:
タクシーが街を流れる
I am not particularly discussing the availability of the latter, and to compare the frequency of these forms is totally irrelevant to my question, but suppose you want to do an estimate. I know of a search engine called Google, which, at this moment, returns 35 hits for the string for the illogical "タクシーが流す", most of which are the relevant phrases, and 14 hits for the string for the logical "タクシーが流れる", of which 7 are the relevant phrases (excluding this very question), so that indicates that the illogical form is used almost five times the logical form (keeping aside the hits made by another "Google" that I am not aware of, which returns 16,700 results for the illogical "タクシーが流す" and 507,000 results for the logical "タクシーが流れる", leading to the opposite conclusion, according to a user of this site).
Outside of this peculiar usage, the transitive 流す requires an animate and volitional agent as the subject, which is distinct from the theme that is the object, and cannot be used reflexively.
* そうめんが流す
店員がそうめんを流す
そうめんが流れる* 気球が空を流す
冒険家のチームが気球を空に流す
気球が空を流れる* ニュースが電光掲示板を流す
ディレクターがニュースを電光掲示板に流す
ニュースが電光掲示板を流れる
Similarly, in stock exchange contexts, transitive verbs are used instead of their intransitive counterpart:
株が高値をつける
株に高値がつく株が引ける
株が引く
On the contrary, when directions are given in cooking, intransitives are used instead of the more logically appropriate transitives:
酒とみりんが入ります
酒とみりんを入れます
Outside of this peculiar context, the intransitive 入る either 1) requires an animate volitional agent 2) or the sentence has to describe the potential/ability rather than a single event.
* 日曜日の晩に辞書がかばんに入ります
日曜日の晩に私が辞書をかばんに入れます
この小さな辞書はかばんに入るけど、この大きいのは入りません
Why do these switching happen?