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Comment by Camillo | Hacker News Reader

As a foreigner, "right on red" seems insane to me.

I've heard this before and I have to wonder, do stop signs also seem insane to you? Because right on red is no different. You stop, look both ways, and go if it's safe to do so.

This is not how American drivers deal with it. When they don't see an immediate risk of hitting someone, most don't bother stopping at red lights when they want to turn right on red, which is not the case with stops.

A red light means the same thing as a stop sign in this case. I would expect people to treat them equally.

I'm sure in both cases the traffic ticket would be the same - failure to stop.

Yes, so it basically turns an intersection with traffic lights into one without. The point of a red light is that it removes the guesswork, and gives people going in other directions the guarantee that the stopped traffic won't move. Right on red throw all that out of the window.

There's no need for guesswork. The person with the red light yields to everyone.

He has to notice them first. With a normal red light, the car doesn't move, period.

> He has to notice them first.

...which is exactly the same as a stop sign, too.

If your hypothetical stationary driver cannot see oncoming traffic either at a stop sign or stop light, your driver can't drive correctly.

I learned to drive in a country that didn't have right on red, have now lived 9 years in countries that do.

It makes perfect sense, and it's very hard to understand why it wouldn't be allowed. As the other comments have said, it's a hard stop, so you wait until it's clear before going.

(Obviously, for countries that drive on the left, it would be left on red)

I agree entirely, I also have an issue with "yield on green".

Green means "go" at 99% of the lights I run into. Then there's that one left turn I make that's "yield on green" and I'm not supposed to turn. I'm not surprised at all that the intersection has the most accidents annually. I don't think many people are used to yield-on-green lights... so many T-bones its amazing they haven't changed the traffic flow.

You mean this? http://www.epermittest.com/road-signs/left-turn-yield-green

Isn't that just a normal green light on a two-way street? Do you mean all intersections should have protected left turns?

What's yield on green? Isn't that a regular green light (you can't turn left unless nobody is coming at you)?

That's how the vast majority of green lights work here in Canada...

It's a rarity in my part of the state. There are only 2 intersections that don't have protected left turns and are yield-on-green. They both have triangular signs stating they are yield-on-green and those signs get ignored.

I've been honked at and nearly rear-ended because I yield-on-green on protected turns at unfamiliar lights where I expect them to be yield-on-green (I assume any lane without a dedicated arrow light to be yield-on-green.)

The intersections around here give opposite sides protected left turns, then normal straight traffic flow. None but the "weird two" are yield-on-green and those two intersections, as a result, have a ton of accidents caused by people not yielding properly.

It probably wouldn't be as big of an issue if every other light in the town was yield-on-green instead of protected. It's the fact that those two lights are the only "special" ones that I think causes the problem. Since everyone is used to having a protected turn, people ignore the "yield on green" sign and turn into oncoming traffic (whom they think have a red light).

They have that here in The Netherlands for bikes: both the cyclist and the driver get green, but the driver must yield to the cyclist (yield to the right).

Countless times I've been almost hit and then screamed at by clueless drivers.

Same in Denmark, but I've not yet seen a near miss.

In the UK, when the pedestrian has a green man all road traffic has a red light, without exception. (Same for cycle paths crossing roads, but they're rare.)

I'd guess foreign drivers would get this wrong in NL, DK etc. Turning right and thinking "the pedestrian has seen me, I have a green light, they will wait" when the pedestrian is thinking "they've seen me, I have green, I can cross".

They removed all the "Yield / Unprotected Left Turn" lights in my town, just for this reason. People simply don't understand. It's a bummer to sit and wait, but it does save lives.

I guess I don't even follow what this means, does every single stop light where someone could possibly turn left now have the green arrow in your town? That seems ridiculous to me, coming from a city where thousands or tens of thousands of stoplights would need to be retrofitted just because people don't know how to turn left on a two way street.

It's "right on red after stopping". The problem is people don't stop.

Exactly. If I had a reasonable expectation that >99% of the drivers obeyed the law, I wouldn't feel too hesitant to let my 3yo cross the street on his own. He knows how to look both ways, and cross when people have stopped. Even right-on-red is safe at face value. But I don't even believe that 5% of drivers obey all of the laws that protect crossing pedestrians. It's almost as if they don't expect pedestrians to exist.

Right on red is OK. What is crazy is the lack of roundabouts.

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