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Comment by kaonwarb | Hacker News Reader

Just rewatched and agree they both entered on orange, which is legal. This clear misinterpretation makes me question the author's take as a whole. Did they consider that cars also regularly run stop signs? Is it possible that this is, in fact, safer for pedestrians, albeit more frustrating while waiting?

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OT, but it fired me up a bit - people that enter the intersection on green or orange awaiting a break to turn left. And then don’t clear the intersection on red. Now they’re in everyone’s way. How do you get them to understand they’ve already “run the light” and just need to move?

Would you rather they floor it and beat the straight through traffic when the light turns green? 1-2 cars entering the intersection and then getting through when traffic clears on the red is less worse than the alternative.

One of us has misunderstood the other. Maybe I’m misreading you. Let me clarify my position.

If you’ve entered the intersection on green or orange, and must await oncoming traffic before you can safely turn left, then the light turns red before oncoming traffic clears, once that traffic has indeed stopped for the red, you need to complete your left turn to clear the intersection, even on red.

This situation is clearly spelled out in the driving manuals for my state.

If you are not willing to continue on if the light turns red while you are in the intersection, then don’t enter the intersection until it’s clear - wait behind the line.

For the last sentence, do you mean continue on straight if the desired left turn is not available?

Indeed. Clear the intersection by continuing along a ‘forward’ path. Meaning if you’re left turn became unavailable (crash, blocked by utility workers or police, sink hole opened up, etc), continue on moving back into the correct lanes for your direction of travel.

Other traffic (who are now, or have been) waiting at a red light should be able to tell you’re in the way and wait for you to move.

No, he means wait behind the line.

I remember my father telling me that was how it was supposed to be done, as the yellow light for oncoming traffic would convince them to stop and give you the time to complete the left turn. It only worked when they weren't also running the yellow light! These days I prefer waiting to turn so that I'm not stuck out in the middle of the intersection when the traffic light changes.

If you are stuck in the middle when turning crossing traffic needs to wait until you clear the intersection.

I find it's better for me to just miss the turn while I wait behind the line. I've seen too many instances where that doesn't work out the way it's intended to want to make it a habit for me anymore.

This is really odd and would be extremely frustrating for people behind you. You are supposed to enter the intersection. Keep your wheels straight and then turn whenever there is a gap in the oncoming traffic or when the light turns red and the oncoming traffic stops.

Wouldn't you have the same issue at the next light, and still be stuck waiting to turn, making no forward progress at all?

Note that I'm assuming an unprotected left turn (with right hand traffic as in the US) at a busy intersection with incoming cars running yellow lights; please let me know if any part of my assumption mismatches yours.

If you do not wait in the intersection itself then you would never get a chance to turn in many intersections. The only solution is to always wait in the intersection itself.

I don't know where you live, but where live, you are allowed to complete the left turn even after the light turns red. Hopefully the red light will convince oncoming cars to stop even if the yellow did not. Cross traffic has to yield to you as you exit the intersection. I hope this gives you more confidence in making left turns safely!

This is literally everyone where I live, and if you tried to wait before the intersection, people would be (rightly) incredibly angry at you. It just wouldn’t work. Nobody lingers in the intersection after oncoming traffic clears either.

As far as I know, that is both legal and standard practice in California, and at many intersections with traffic and no protected turn, is in practice the only possible way to turn left: there will simply never be a break in traffic, from the moment the light turns green until it turns red, and so without entering the intersection and then turning on red, it is simply not possible to turn left at all.

They even teach you to do this in driver's ed. I know HN skews "rules are rigid" but this one should be known by everyone.

In parts of Europe the practice itself is even rigid, with markings for where in the intersection your car is supposed to be while waiting to turn.

This is why I always find it weird that in the US (and a lot of other countries) the stoplights are on the end of the intersection, instead of at the entrance. If they're at the entrance, there's no dillema - you can't cross the light if it's red. If it's yellow, you brake if you have time, but if not, it's fine to keep going - the opposing light is going to wait a few seconds before turning green specifically to avoid this.

This also encourages drivers to actually stop in the right place (since they can't see the light otherwise), and it's friendlier for pedestrians since it avoids drivers stopping on top of the crosswalk.

(I've also never heard of the turn-right-on-red rule anywhere other than the US. Over here in Portugal if it's fine to turn right while the light is red, there's just going to be a separate green/flashing light to turn right. A lot clearer!)

The location of the traffic light has no legal meaning, there's a white painted line on the ground, which is the stop line.

But if we were to modify signal positioning to make it impractical to stop past the white line, fewer people would overshoot and wait.

We do this kind of thing in many other places in life. Imagine if we didn’t use barriers anywhere and only used painted lines to tell people where to be - don’t walk to this side of the line, that’s where the valuables are “stored” (no walls, just markings.)

We use ‘guardrails’ all over the place. Sometimes to nudge people (one can jump a literal guardrail), sometimes to prevent injury (you simply cannot physically access the active industrial robot without intentional effort), and all kinds of inconvenience in between to suggest where to be.

Place the lights so that they’re only visible further back, and people will stop further back.

When I stop past the while line, it's almost always because I thought the way was clear, but then something happened, and I had to stop, and then the light changed, and I was stuck past the white line.

If you implement your plan I would never even see the light become red!

And that's fine, because you've _already crossed the line_ and therefore you can (and should) go through. You're no longer running a red light at this point, since it's behind you, you're just crossing the intersection like normal.

Do you drive much in cities? I'll lay out something that happens all the time:

I cross the line slowly, and some pedestrian darts out, so I stop, by the time they cross, the opposing traffic has a green, I however (in your scenario) do not know this because I can't see that the light is red for me.

So now I'm driving forward, thinking I'm good and some car comes flying through because it's green for them, and they can't see me because of the layout of the block.

I need to see and know that the light is red and just stop and wait there.

Similar things happen when the car in front of me wants to turn left, but didn't bother with a blinker - I'm in the intersection, past the line, and suddenly I need to stop because he's turning. He turned, but now it's red for me and I better wait right there, and not go forward, because other cars are about to drive.

You also aren't taking into account the varying heights of cars. If I'm in car behind a van, I won't be able to see the light because it's directly above the van so I can't see it.

Also:

Your goal is to keep cars from going too far into the intersection after a red, right?

The problem is you are assuming this happens due to incompetence, but it actually happens because of driving conditions like I mentioned.

If the stoplight was suspended above the stop line it would be harder if not impossible for the driver to see it.

There's usually two - one suspended above the stop line, and one lower, on a pole on the side of the road, usually around eye level. This way both the driver in the front and drivers in the back get a clear view.

This is not a hypothetical "if", pretty much every country in Europe has traffic lights set up like this. Just take a look at Lisbon or Amsterdam in street view to see what I mean.

I’ve seen this in on-ramps but surely you can understand why duplicating traffic lights isn’t an ideal solution.

In some jurisdictions, this is literally how it works. You claim the intersection, wait for oncoming traffic to stop, then perform your turn. It's legal in jurisdictions where red means you cannot enter, like California.

The major problem is that on very congested streets, the driver won't know if the exit will be free of traffic when the light turns red. Blocking the intersection is illegal.

To a certain degree, it is a failing of Civic design and the ruleset. The solution is generally no left turns during peak hours, which is a duct tape fix

What difference does it make? The main point is that this design induces drivers to speed up even more than they're already speeding (and, this being North America, they're already speeding), at a dangerous point in time when pedestrians are starting to cross. It literally makes no practical difference whether they're entering on a very late yellow or a red.

Traffic engineers aren't blind to the fact that it's NA custom to (roughly) +5 on residential, +8 on state highways, and +5-15 depending on on the lane on interstates. People get up in arms about it on the internet for some reason while IRL the roads are just designed with this in mind.

I have more of an issue with the idea that you can make a previously dangerously fast street/road safer by mere virtue of reducing the speed limit, but leaving it physically designed as before. You lower the limit by -5, the +5 speeding turns to +10 speeding and absolutely nothing changes save for wasted paint. I wish North American traffic engineers (and municipal politicians) were better educated on the idea that the only reliable way to slow down drivers is to force them to slow down by making it physically intensely uncomfortable to speed, and that sending drivers to body shops after fender-benders with traffic calming features is preferable to sending vulnerable street users to the morgue. Alas, both occupations are still stuck in an outdated car-centric view of urban transportation.

This competency shortfall is present in other transportation- and infrastructure-related fields. See for example how badly North American construction companies and government bureaucracies handle big transit projects. Third-world levels of mediocrity compared to the cost-effective, competent management in, say, Spain or Japan.

> You lower the limit by -5, the +5 speeding turns to +10 speeding and absolutely nothing changes save for wasted paint.

A couple weeks ago, a 55mph limit near me was lowered to 50mph. A cop watched during the busy times for a few days. Now everyone is generally going 5mph slower than they were. Seems successful so far.

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