Green light for people turning right while also providing a green light for pedestrians crossing that stream is common in the US, but also just begging to kill people. Frankly the same applies to "right on red".
In the UK, zebra crossings (pedestrian crossings not protected by traffic lights) have two features which help make them safe:
1. Flashing orange lamps, which allow a driver to see the crossing from a distance, even if their view of the roadway is obscured by vehicles in front of them.
2. No parking zones for several car lengths either side of the crossing, which allow a driver to have an unobstructed view of the pavement (sidewalk) on either side of the crossing, so they can see if there are pedestrians about to start crossing.
In contrast, when I drive here, I have to be really vigilant to watch out for crossings that have neither a stop sign nor a traffic light. And then, because there are cars obscuring my view of the sidewalk and first few feet of the crossing, I have to slow down and look directly to the right as I pass, lest I see a pedestrian a second too late.
This poor design makes pedestrians distrustful (and rightly so) so, in many places, pedestrians will wait at crossings until there are no cars in sight, and only then start to cross, even though they had right of way all along.
- you must come to a complete stop before making the turn, and
- as your light is red, you know to look out for pedestrians or vehicles that have right of way
At least in my experience over the last couple of decades in the US.
Meanwhile it seems like drivers in California don't even know what a stop sign is.
We have right turn on red here, and if you were to run someone over while doing that, you'd not have many friends left for being such an asshole.
I disagree entirely with the article. Rule number one of driving is "watch where you are going and don't run into anything", which the driver in this case clearly failed to do. The two lanes turning right means that your view of the crosswalk could be obscured, but in that case, it is your responsibility as a driver to only continue moving if you are sure it is safe. I do not give a crap how supposedly "unsafe" the intersection was designed, it is your responsibility as a driver to not drive into people.
We have stop sign cameras here and a bunch of old people got annoyed enough about tickets to get a local news cycle claiming the cameras were unfair. Literally every single video they produced as evidence showed them rolling through without ever stopping, and what they were claiming was the their brake lights being visible meant they’d stopped. I don’t think any of them had paused to consider whether their subjective impression while driving actually matched the motion of their vehicles.
Also no-stop right turns at red lights are made by putting a triangular island that forms a "protected" right lane. I put "protected" in quotes because it's protected in traffic engineer jargon but affords no protection to peds. Few pedestrians realise that the driver is not supposed to stop when making this turn, and that even when a crosswalk is marked there is no pedestrian signal. Super dangerous. With these it's often hard to even see a pedestrian even when you slow down.
Again, this is California; I don't know about anywhere else. CA has it's own traffic laws; for example I believe it's the only state in which it's legal to overtake on the right hand side (the equivalent is called "undertake" in the UK I believe).
Similarly, many places are taking up the "Idaho Stop law" for cyclists. Gets rather annoying to have to explain to random folks that you can, in fact, not fully stop at a stop sign as a biker now.
You're right about the downstream, I am in such a situation and it's miserable trying to make a left onto the arterial cross street near me.
It's actually not that big of a problem - in the right situation. My country does something similar, but only in low-traffic situations and with good visibility.
For example, imagine a junction between a high-traffic road and a low-traffic street. A left turn from the low-traffic street might turn out to be nearly impossible without traffic lights. However, the right turn onto the low-traffic street does not warrant a dedicated turning lane, and in space-restricted environments that often isn't even a possibility at all. And even a moderate pedestrian volume will lead to the high-traffic road being severely limited in the straight-ahead direction just because a pedestrian wants to close the low-traffic street.