I hate how road laws are inconsistent everywhere in the country.
Like one city, you can’t do a u turn, but in another city, you can do a U-turn as long as you scream out of your window to the Beastie Boys.
But states rights hurr durr!
Yeah, the inconsistency is literally a problem for public safety. And it gives automatic excuses for car drivers following rules they may be used to from another state. Absolutely wild.
Where I live, some stop signs have a rectangular white sign underneath them that says “except for right turn” which means you don’t have to stop if you’re turning right. Works OK for locals because we know that exception is there, but people driving there for the first time have no fucking idea and all they see from the cross street is the back of the stop sign, so they assume the other person has to stop.
“right turns on red (after a full stop, when clear and not otherwise posted) are legal in nearly every state”, Really? Really!? I never knew this and… I don’t know but, this just sounds insane. how long do folks have to wait for red to clear, 2 hours? What reason could there be to allow you to legally bypass a red signal? Are the signal routines programmed so bad? Why? Why is this a thing? I’m baffled. hahahaha
Locally, if both pedestrians and a crossing motorized lane get a green light, there’s a flashing blue light for the motorized lane that comes on together with the green, explaining you to look for those pedestrians. And running a red light is only allowed during calamity like letting services pass.
edit:
Lots of reactions, none of which really explain why their local traffic law team chose to weaken the message of a red light instead of upgrading their signal routines. Its all stopgaps to ease congestion (and something about emissions, lol). There are other ways my brothers and sisters and everyone in the mix. We need to safeguard some ez rules, like red is no. Now red is only no sometimes. There should be about 50k choices you make before you chose to diminish the power of a red light. The 2-1 downvote ratio make me think that folks feel like it’s either right on red or wait in traffic forever. That’s the carbrain talking, y’all, we can all have it better than that.
Wait until you hear about left turns on red being allowed from 1 way street …
Turns on red are allowed if you don’t cross over an opposing direction. People call it right turn on red because 99.999% of the time it’s a right turn.
Is there any research on the danger of right on red? Theoretically existing laws prevent unsafe acceleration so any pedestrian interaction from a full stop would happen at well below 10mph. Practically, that’s not always true so I do think that it makes sense to disallow it case by case (area with high pedestrian traffic, obscured crossing), but overall it doesn’t feel much worse than turning into a driveway across a sidewalk.
YES. OMG so many studies.
https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/1322/dot_1322_DS1.pdf
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S000145752400455X
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/03611981251398754
And more but you get the point and that’s not even getting into non US countries where road standards are more pedestrian-centric.
The conflict arises because at a red light all the driver’s attention is left watching for oncomming traffic making it easy to miss a pedestrian on the right - a pedestrian that technically has the rightaway. And if visability is low - say it’s dark, raining, foggy, or you drive an SUV with that giant frame bar running along the side of your windshield - it’s easy to miss someone in the crossing. Especially if they are low because they are a child or in a mobility chair. Safest thing to do is not have pedestrians and vehicles competing for the same space at the same time.
from a full stop
Lol not only do most people never come to a full stop before turning right on red, but also I’ve known many many people who don’t even realize you have to stop before doing it (they think “right on red” means you can treat it as a green light if you’re turning right). The whole danger to pedestrians is that the drivers are looking left to see if cars are coming from that direction and won’t even see the pedestrian until they’re splattered across their bumper.
Some intersections where I live have signs that say “right turn on red after complete stop” which pisses me off because that’s always the case. The signs imply that otherwise you don’t have to stop before turning right.
