Nah, thanks though.
“The driver inches into the crosswalk, watching the oncoming traffic to his left and waiting for a gap to appear. He finally spots one and accelerates into the turn”
Um, what? There are cars zooming across the crosswalk, which definitely wouldn’t have a crossing signal. In this imaginary scenario, a pedestrian is trying to sprint across an intersection against a crossing signal.
There are enough horrific traffic situations created by cars and urban congestion, do we really need to make up a stupid and unlikely one where the pedestrian is the idiot? If anything, this article should be against right on green. Good luck with that.
Dude. It fucking happens. People die. It’s not hard to find out. Don’t rely on your own thought experiments when there is actual fucking data at your fingertips.
I think the article means that a pedestrian is trying to cross in front of the turning car where the pedestrian does have right of way, so perpendicular to the turning car and parallel with the traffic which has the green light and walk signal.
Oh my god. What a waste of time it was berating you. Might as well try to educate a rock.
====== ====
P
C
P is pedestrian, C is car. Equal signs are cars going right.
Pedestrian is crossing the road going left. Pedestrian has a green light/cross walk. The car C isn’t looking at P; the car C is looking at the gap in the equal signs.
So a pedestrian walks in front of a car that has pulled into a crosswalk while the driver is looking the other way? And then after all of these specific conditions are met, a pedestrian is hit by a car that is starting from a dead stop and, given the width of a crosswalk (which it’s already pulled into), travels three feet before impact?
My point is given how many actually dangerous traffic conditions that exist that inhibit walkability, this statistically unlikely (see the report to congress on “RoR” accident frequency below) and extremely specific scenario seems like a stupid one to focus on.
I’m surprised you’re surprised that people are talking about it. I have personally experienced this multiple times as a kid, and judging from the downvote ratios going on, it seems like other people have had similar experiences.
Tl;dr it’s a very common occurrence
I find absolutely baffling that the red signal, the signal made specifically to mean stop, the stop signal, can allow traffic to go through it. If you really need to let cars to go through, just add another traffic light for conversions
Do you find it baffling that a stop sign also allows traffic to go through it?
Not really cause the function isn’t the same. A red light means stop indefinitely until the light stops being red, a stop sign is more of a stop and then go. I do admit my wording was rather poor, tho.
In my country the Red Light is a predicable function of the road, so turning right on red is fundamentally removing part of the function of the red light. I know crossings in some countries are…weird, but here, if you see the light turning red and are immediately in front of the stopped traffic, you can cross it to the median cause no traffic is going to cross it. A right on red remove this predicability, and even if you absolutely need to have this function, you can just add another traffic light that controls that lane.
yeah, i don’t understand why people just want to make driving more annoying. implement better public transportation options, don’t destroy something most people feel some sort of enjoyment of / nostalgia for / etc. just like the piracy argument about how you need to make legitimate services better than the bad option
That enjoyment/nostalgia comes at the expense of others safety, drains our economy and helps cause the ecological collapse of our planet
Thos article literally points out how drivers are not aware of the pedestrians routinely put at risk by this insane rule and links to studies supporting their point.
It’s a shame you find it so torturous to wait a few seconds at a red light but that is absolutely not worth risking other people’s lives.
Its not an insane rule, but an established norm in most areas. What has been for 50 years hasn’t suddenly become dangerous.
What has changed in my county is relaxed situational awareness, false security, and avoidance in basic nonverbal communication such as simple eye contact.
People complain my city isn’t walkable friendly, but I have a 3 mile exercise loop I do weekly for 4 years and never, never had a problem. Just be alert and smart. Eye contact, visibility, follow rules… that’s middle school stuff.
Also, the “few seconds” argument is long in the tooth as a recent “calming” measure removed a right lane and traffic now backs up 3 blocks. I waited 3 light cycles to get through an intersection. I don’t buy that “few seconds” fluff after that nonsence.
Who knew letting cars OUT of traffic efficiently REDUCES congestion?!
Crowd gasps
“That’s how we’ve always done it” is always about the worst argument you could ever make. It’s a well-established rule in the US and pretty much exclusively the US because the rest of us aren’t insane enough to implement a rule like that.
What has been for 50 years hasn’t suddenly become dangerous
True, it’s been pretty constant in its high level of danger for at least 50 years. Only now are we starting to think it might be unacceptable.
Everyone should be alert and smart, but mistakes are ultimately unavoidable. We should design the system to reduce the chances of a mistake having fatal consequences.
Nah, it’s rare. https://one.nhtsa.gov/people/outreach/traftech/1995/tt086.htm
Meh, shits actually quite rare. https://one.nhtsa.gov/people/outreach/traftech/1995/tt086.htm
When folks are talking to you in percentages and avoid absolutes you can assume they are massaging the message to be more palatable to the intended audience.
Ninety-three percent of RTOR pedestrian or bicyclist crashes resulted in injury.
So, one of the data sources they use is for fatal injuries only and it appears that right turn on red accidents are not usually fatal. Ok, but look at that injury rate; injuries that are not fatal but could still be life-changing.
That article also talks about the limitations of the second data source they use
My overall reaction to that article is not “meh, no big deal”, but “crap, we should have better data on this”. Anecdotally, I’ve seen much worse driving behavior since COViD, where it’s becoming all too common for cars to not even slow down for right on red, and people here online are trying to defend that you don’t even need to stop despite that being clearly stated in the law. I do have a nice walkable downtown, but walking it has been getting more dangerous in recent years: if you hit my kid because you didn’t feel like stopping, it won’t be at all comforting for you to say “meh, it’s not a fatality”
Accidents are rare, sure, and fatalities are rare because the relatively low speed impact. We can nevertheless aspire to create more inclusive infrastructure where pedestrians and cyclists can feel a sense of belonging. The car-centric roads we have in the US today could be better for everyone.
And banning right in red ain’t it. It’ll be ineffective, piss off drivers, and have little to no meaningful effect. If you want to blow political capital in this worthless shit more power to us but I’ll prefer a pragmatic approach that has a chance of being effective.
piss off drivers,
oh no their precious feelings, once again taking precedence over human life
piss off drivers
you need to have your licence taken and put into anger management. That is not how you formulate laws and it should never be the motivation. Own your own fee-fees.
I think the general point people are making to you is that, in many municipalities where right on red would be bad, there are enough voters in the pedestrian base alone that nobody has to “appeal to drivers” in order to win a majority. The issue itself has validity on the basis that the health of the pedestrians should be a higher priority than the feeling that drivers are being impacted negatively by not being able to perform this maneuver. You could maybe make a counterargument comprised of economic impacts, as a couple people have tried to do, or a counterargument about how it saves emissions, but I’m sort of inclined to think that caving and giving it over to cars is sort of an approach that has diminishing returns in both of those directions, compared to the alternative.
If making people feel safer walking and biking in cities = “worthless shit” to you then why are you even here? I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been honked at or yelled at or nearly run over while walking or on my bike by drivers who refuse to stop at red lights at all because of the right on red rule.
Cars don’t belong in cities at all, with the possible exception of delivery/commercial vehicles and vehicles for disabled people. Banning right on red is just one part of a multi-pronged approach to get us there, together with better bicycle infrastructure and public transit, etc.
Hate to break it to you but that link is talking in percentages. The only absolute number the give is number of fatalities, everything else is a percentage. Specifically, it claims that because turning right on red represents a small % of overall injuries from all traffic it’s not unsafe. That’s not an exaggeration, it’s literally the conclusion they give.
In conclusion, there are a relatively small number of deaths and injuries each year caused by right-turn-on-red crashes. These represent a very small percentage of all crashes, deaths, and injuries. Because the number of crashes due to right-turn-on-red is small, the impact on traffic safety, therefore, has also been small. Insufficient data exist to analyze left turn on red.
A bullet to the arm is safer than a bullet to the head but that doesn’t make it safe.
You people won’t stop until folks are living in a bubble under gun point. There is always another low value crusade that most people don’t want to hear about just shoved in their faces.
Compelling argument. Counter-point: what the fuck are you talking about and how does it relate to people’s right not to be run over in the street?
Approximately 84 fatal crashes occurred per year during the 1982-1992 time period involving a right-turning vehicle at an intersection where RTOR is permitted. During this same time period there were 485,104 fatalities.
Thus, less than 0.2 percent of all fatalities involved a right-turning vehicle maneuver at an intersection where RTOR is permitted. FARS, however, does not discern whether the traffic signal was red. Therefore, the actual number of fatal RTOR crashes is somewhere between zero and 84 and may be closer to zero than 84.
They literally use numbers in their report.
Fatalities are one thing to consider. Another is injuries that can range from minor to life changing.
I don’t know the stats on this but pedestrian injuries would be something for policy makers to consider as well.
And in general:
- If deaths are up it’s safe to assume injuries are up as well
- Good policy making also involves preventing problems, and educating people on the issue. If 0.2% of deaths is acceptable and trending up at what point do we take action? 0.5%? 1%? 5%?
I don’t think that the US even tracks injuries at least I can’t find anything from a cursory search. But according to Vancouver RTOR is 13% of all deaths and serious injuries. https://viewpointvancouver.ca/2022/08/23/rethinking-the-right-turn-on-red/
