Lights have to get smarter. Right on red is half the traffic flow in my area.* I always see so many situations where a green turn arrow would be appropriate, and yet the intersection is relying on the right-on-red rule instead, causing each car to pause when it should be flowing through. And even more situations where a light always stops the majority direction of traffic on what must be a fixed timer that poorly syncs with some upstream lights, because it always seems to turn red as a clump of cars arrives, even when there’s almost always no cross traffic. Maybe right on red is more dangerous in some places, and we can get rid of it, but we have to replace it with some actual civil engineering instead of making traffic even worse.
*±100% margin of error, sample size 1
How the hell did you get 0.5 cars going right on red? Did a car just plow through multiple houses between going straight and turning right at an intersection?
Your -2 comment score leads me to believe some people didn’t get your joke. I’ll explain it, which we all know will make it funnier.
The previous comment mentioned their observation of half of the traffic moving through right on red and, later in parentheses, said this was based on n=1, i.e., based on the observation of a single vehicle. I’m 100% certain that was a joke.
The follow-up comment was also certainly a joke. They’re pointing out that the commenter observed one car and then made the claim half of cars use right on red, so they’re jokingly asking how exactly half of one car made it through.
Get it? Now stop downvoting the dude, stats are great, stats dad jokes are better.
Its acting like both a wave and a particle
And today I learned that people should joke around more with statistics.
Yes, but with a ±100% margin of error, that means right on red traffic could be anywhere between 0 and 100%. I think it’s a safe assumption that with n=1 it’s one of those extremes, not fractional cars.
Totally agreed, and from the pedestrian side of things, civil engineering would be helpful too.
Our roads are too fucking wide for pedestrians. Give me some pedestrian islands and raised crosswalks.
I’m more interested in giving pedestrians a direct route that doesnt need to cross fast traffic.
fixed timer that poorly syncs with some upstream lights
This has gotta be the number one traffic issue in the US. Our timer lights are just garbage and we so rarely use sensor lights. Our traffic light setups always seem overcomplicated but not over engineered.
Pedestrian signals are slow too. Have to wait a long time to get the WALK signal, and its rarely necessary as it’s already illegal to not let a pedestrian go at a crosswalk if you’re turning into it, in my state.
Changing traffic laws will have some effect, but really we should be working on more lightrail and more high-speed trainsets. It will take time for housing and business to rebuild around stations, but it will simultaneously keep people safer, alleviate traffic, and reduce emissions. Nothing more satisfying than flying by traffic for less than the price a gallon of gas, especially if you live a decent distance from work or school too.
I’m My State when the lights turn green to take a Right the pedestrian light also gives the pedestrians the green light to cross. So we have cars turning right while pedestrians are crossing. How much safer is that. At least now when you take it right on red the pedestrians don’t have the right to cross.
Equally safe as if a vehicle was coming from your right. You are suppose to yield to those participants in traffic. It’s just that pedestrian can’t hurt you so they are commonly ignored. But they have equal rights and laws like every other participant.
Yeah you’re supposed to yield to pedestrians yet there are no signs indicating so, it’s so dangerous
USA has ass-backwards system for getting drivers license. At least from I could find online. You get learners permit after passing written exam. That’s not nearly enough. In my country you have to attend 20 hours (optional depending on existing licenses) of theory, then pass theoretical exam. Then you have a driving instructor assigned to you for total 40h (or 20h depending on existing licenses) in 1h sessions. You first start training court where you train to start, stop, turn and other driving maneuvers. When instructor deems you ready for traffic only then you get to drive with them in the car and having dual controls for the vehicle. Only when instructor deems you ready you are allowed to take the test for getting the license. And even on the test you first have to pass training court before you are allowed to enter traffic.
By the time you got learners permit you have at least 40h of driving in traffic which is significantly better than just passing written exam.
In my eyes, law is not the problem but experience and people paying attention. Phones, doing makeup, eating food and other things should be forbidden in car because it distracts you too much.
The US is too car-dependent to make a drivers license harder or more expensive to get. Less safety is the price we pay.
Yep, and we are generally not willing (as a society) to pay decent wages for things like teachers, so getting drivers ed teachers for all student drivers would be not possible. Private lessons would work but that would make it unavailable to a lot of less affluent people.
Your roads are wider as well, which someone thought was a great idea for lowering number of traffic accidents, but in reality it only makes people drive faster and more reckless.
If someone is too stupid to learn to drive safely maybe we don’t need them participating in society anyway.
They are free to participate in society, just not drive on the roads. It’s their fault if they can’t learn how to drive.
We need to hold people to some standard. If they are incapable of learning how to drive, we should direct resources to those who are. It’s time we stop catering to the lowest common denominators of society
When I was taking the test prior to my appointment was a girl who failed, and I kid you not, 8-9 times already. She was shaking out of fear. We had a common instructor so I overheard him tell her where she commonly makes mistakes. Basically her driving is fine but she doesn’t follow signs one bit. She would drive fast in school zone or blow through stop signs. And I completely agree, some standards must be upheld. Just being able to get the vehicle moving is not a reason enough to own a license. You need to be able to be part of the system.
You pay much MUCH more for your car dependency, you just don’t even realize how bad it is
There are at least 50 different systems for getting a driver’s license in the US since each state issues its own license. Some states are far more rigorous than others. My home state has a system similar to what you describe only it includes an additional 40 hours driving with another licensed adult, in addition to the hours spent driving with a certified instructor and the classroom hours.
The state I live in now? Not so much. They basically just give out licenses to anyone who shows up, pays the fee and can show that they know what the different pedals do. Unfortunately this produces terrible drivers, as you would expect.
I just did a causal search and got that info but I fully expected a difference between states. Not to such a huge degree. Professional instructors can never be replaced by adult who has a license, no matter how many hours of experience they have. Instructors deal with beginners every day and are familiar with most common mistakes. They also have to be certified here and retake that certification on regular basis.
Saddest thing of all is that safety is lowest common denominator. You can be a good driver and even have tons of experience, all it takes to get hurt or killed is one poor driver. If your own safety in traffic depended on your own skill and you couldn’t hurt anyone else, then by all means take as poor exam as you want but that’s not the case.
Sounds like Revenue Generation to me. Some out of town driver doesn’t know about the local traffic law, gets cited for breaking it, and loses if they fight it.
If it makes it safer while generating revenue, it sounds good to me.
The revenue comes from people though. People who may or may not have the funds to pay it. It’s sneaky and mean
And fewer people could get hurt.
Edit: I don’t really care that much if some get fines, if it reduces deaths. And someone obviously has to start banning it first. Maybe it works wonderfully and everyone else starts banning it.
If it doesn’t help then then they should remove the ban.
Drivers are becoming hostile and idiotic by the day. What you’ll also notice is when it is green, they will stop instead.
Need higher or more severe penalties if this is to save lives
Green doesn’t mean go, it means you are allowed to go. Law specifically states that you are to enter an intersection only if there’s room for you. That is to say you can clear it and not clog the traffic. So no matter if it’s green if there’s congestion in the intersection you are not suppose to enter because that exacerbates the problem.
Personally, i think every infraction on the road should require your Drivers license gets revoked until you go to the dmv & retake your drivers test.
Speed? Blow a stop sigh? Illegally park? All of it should require a retest in order to regain your driving privileges…
We don’t have right on red in europe. Can’t imagine crossing the road to a median with it
We do have conditional turning lights though.
Right on red for us would be like left on red for you
Remember, our roads are flipped
Europe drives on the right. In that part of the world it’s really just the UK and Ireland that drive on the left.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-_and_right-hand_traffic
That may be generally true, but the person they were replying to seems to be from the UK or Ireland.
Bruh what in the hells did i even do to deserve getting fucking insulted like that
Ah shit but of course
It’s banned in NYC but not enforced, so it may as well be legal. Then again, barreling through a red light also isn’t enforced.
They should ban slip lanes too
Uhh not by default! The pedestrian crosswalks need to be hooked to the light, and timed better. When a pedestrian needs to cross (with the button), then no right on red—after the cars go. That way there isn’t a rush by anyone.
Drivers should not have the option to decide for themselves when they think it’s safe
I hate this sentiment. They don’t want people to think for themselves.
Think they mean that most people don’t have the necessary knowledge to determine whether a specific action or inaction is safe. Which is absolutely true.
I disagree. More often than not, people make the safe decision.
I don’t think we live on the same planet.
And yet, less than 50% of car trips result in crashes. Ergo, people make the safe decisions more often than not.
I don’t think that’s true at all and if it was we would have a way bigger problem to solve
This seems weird. Do you guys not have arrows for turning traffic? Just one set of solid lights??
Left arrows are pretty common. Right arrows are extremely rare.
For context, I suspect this is what you mean:
These were common in EU before getting deprecated.
Lol no wtf if that monstrosity.
I mean a second or even third column of lights that are left and/or right arrows.
Generally no, there’s one set of lights for each lane. And green circle means “you can go in any direction according to your lane”.
There are lights with multiple columns, but they’re rare. I can only think of one around here off the top of my head, and that’s because it’s on my commute home. It’s part of a weird six-way intersection where I can take a right either on my green arrow or on the green circle along with the lane to my left going straight (but we share a red). (This is also signed “no right on red”, but that’s pretty common around here.)
Green arrow means it’s a protected turn, i.e. oncoming traffic has a red.
The UK would have this to make it clear whether the turn is allowed and to confirm that there are no conflicting pedestrian green lights:
I live in Charlotte and they can ban all the want and it won’t change anything. CMPD doesnt enforce any traffic laws in this city.
unless it’s that time of the month for quotas or you dare driving while black not a whole lotta traffic enforcement anywhere
cops are so fucking lazy in my state
numerous red light runners right in front of cops
I think traffic laws is one of the few things where Canada is even worse than the US. It’s outright retarded how traffic lights work here and it’s a small miracle that we don’t have casualties every single day on every single street
What’s the difference? I grew up only a few hours from the border but have never actually been to Canada.
Light’s I’m not sure about. I’ve only driven from Vancouver to Bellingham, and a rental in Nevada somewhere, and the only notable difference is people seem to actually do the stay right and pass on the left thing in the states. Oh and half of Canadians don’t use turn signals. Do Americans use turn signals?
I would say yes , the majority of American drivers use their turn signals. Unless they drive a BMW, then they can’t be bothered.
I find it incredibly interesting, and annoying, how universal BMW-retardiration is across the world. Diagonal parking, no turn signals, overtaking before roundabout, etc. It’s as if buying BMW drops someone’s IQ by at least 30.
Traffic lights, for one.
Normally green means “you can go, don’t worry nothing in your way”, of course when everyone obeys the rules.
In Canada, green means “well you’re allowed to go but there is still traffic crossing your way” which literally removes the single one reason why traffic lights were invented in the first place. Going left in Canada is an exercise in futility. First you have to deal with cars from the other side going straight on. So you drive to the middle of the crossing, then wait for those cars to clalear. But wait, there is more! Now you have to deal with all the pedestrians that also are crossing. Meanwhile the light turned yellow for a full two seconds, before turning red, and you’re still stuck in the middle of the crossing. Finally the pedestrians have cleared and after blocking the entire intersection for other traffic, now coming from left and right, for a full 5 seconds, you can finally continue to the left.
Each red - green cycle takes a good minute, and per cycle only one car can go so if there are 30 cars in front of you, waiting to make a left turn, you’re fucked for the next half hour.
Who ever came up with this system should be lines up and shot. If he’s dead already, dig him up, shoot his corpse and bury him again.
It’s beyond stupid and dangerous.
As a pedestrian, you always have to run and look around you to be sure you won’t be run over by some distracted driver, as a driver you are in a constant full panic mode to try and not murder pedestrians. It’s a shitshow
She wasn’t killed because motor vehicles can’t make 90deg turns with a city corner radius at 50mph. (Drivers would if physics allowed)
This is OK and we really need to update speed limits and enforcement with what we’ve learned about safety since the 60s
