This feels like an analogy for bike lanes.
As an aside, are there real L-shaped traffic light stacks? I’ve always seen them with the arrow at the bottom. The direction of the arrow makes it perfectly understandable without putting it off to the side. But I could imagine a traffic light company marketing these.
Depends on the country. I’ve only seen these.
It’s informative in that you can guess what the extra light is even when off.
I guess, but in my experience there’s red, yellow, green, and any extra bottom one is an arrow.
With us, it can be an arrow right, an arrow forward, a light saying bus, a bunch of things
This would be much less of a problem if fewer people insisted on bringing their whole living room everywhere they go.
Where exactly are those cars heading? There’s no road forward and only one lane to the right.
Turning left.
And not signaling. That tracks.
The comic definitely made it more confusing by choosing the main (non-intersecting) road of a T junction to illustrate this. In most countries, if this road splits into two lanes, the left-turning lane would split off, and the right-turning lane would go straight.
Edit: Apparently, this style of junction is more common in the US. In Europe, I’ve only seen this kind of junction on highways, but that would be without traffic lights and with a much longer turning lane.
That lawn on the right won’t plow itself, amirite?
Canada, in a single image? I’ve driven cars in most European countries, Canada, US (small amount), Mexico.
Canada has the worst road designs of them all, though since almost everything here is modelled after the US, I guess it could still be worse there
I regularly see road situations where I can only wonder how high they were, what they were smoking, and where I can get some
Intersections where only one lane has traffic lights, the other doesn’t. How are you supposed to cross that? Simple: you throw a hail Mary, close your eyes, andale a run for it while praying to some non-exist God. This is howy stepson got sideswiped, by a guy having to do exactly that.
Making a left turn in Canada? Great, you got green! Go? Well no, cars are still coming from the other side, they inexplicably got green too so now the intersection with traffic lights also acts as an intersection without traffic lights. Amazing designs!
But wait, there is more!
Once those cars from the other side are gone, you might be tempted to think that you can now just drive, but noooooooh, this is Canada! Pedestrians also got green so now you need to try and avoid those too if you can. The amount of near misses that I’ve had and that I’ve seen with others is staggering, crossing roads in Canada is fucking dangerous.
All this adds up to that going left basically means that you get green light and you can’t do shit until it gets orange, then you quickly squeeze yourself through and pray that you didn’t murder a school class by accident.
This, in turn, means that going to the left is an exercise in patience, because each green red cycle, about one car will be able to go to the left. If each cycle takes a minute, and you have ten cars in front of you, that means you’ll have to wait ten minutes I shit you not.
Compare that to the Netherlands, where intersections get redesigned and rebuilt every time when anyone sees there are tooany accidents, and there are soany amazing traffic flow control designs there. Here in canada, traffic flow designs is “road, done”
I love Canada, I feel proudly Canadian, but Canadian road designs are removed as fuck.
Making a left turn in Canada? Great, you got green! Go? Well no, cars are still coming from the other side, they inexplicably got green too so now the intersection with traffic lights also acts as an intersection without traffic lights. Amazing designs!
Sounds normal to me and I’m in Europe. Unless it’s explicitly signaled with an arrow in the traffic light expect oncoming traffic and of course there are pedestrians.
Oh, it’s worse in the US, but it also varies wildly by State. Boston roads are defined by the most negative possible combination of local knowledge, horse buggy trails, and fuck you. New York? Turn lanes can fuck right off, let’s make sure one car can block an entire lane of cars trying to pass by. Also, let’s cram as many secondary roads into one short highway as possible that is the only way to go a certain direction so that it’s at a near standstill for 15 hours a day. Make sure it’s under construction for every 9 out of 10 years. Oh, and that’ll be $8 toll for the luxury of the experience. Texas? Make each direction on a highway 6 lanes wide with everything from scrapyard clunkers and 10 foot tall brodozers going 80 mph, and they‘ll shoot you if you say anything. Midwest? Hope you have good suspension to cope with all the potholes and missing chunks of bridges. California? 14 lanes wide and at a dead stop in traffic.
The thing that you have to keep in mind is that Canadian roads (and, presumably, American roads, too) were designed for a very different transportation culture than the one that exists today. In many cases, they were built for horses and carriages, and retrofitted to motor vehicles that grew up in a much less populated country. No, they didn’t work well in the 50s, either, but the density of cars was low enough, and the kinds of people who drove were different enough, that it kinda sorta worked. But as the populations have grown, and as the culture has become more high strung, and driving has become a necessity for many people (and as vehicles have gotten larger, taller, and more fortress-like), navigating the streets has gotten riskier for all involved.
And no, it won’t get fixed, because North Americans hate change, and we would rather give a small number of millionaires and billionaires tax cuts than actually spend money on social infrastructure in any kind of meaningful or thought out way.
Inaccurate. It’s two cars with 1.5 car lengths in front of each.
You’re right, this is worse.
Is that right-angle traffic light a common thing? I’ve never seen one like that before.
Yes.
Am I the only one deeply irritated that the left going lane has no arrows and no one is indicating left either?
This intersection really hurts my sense of order!Some people don’t indicate when the lane they’re in can be used only to go one way. It’s not necessarily the best course of action, but you just sorta learn to deal with it
My headcanon is that the right turning person’s blinker is the only one out of sync
Thanks, that idea has a certain beauty to it.
I will now adopt it and move closer to inner peace again!
They’re all BMWs…
has no arrows
How do you know? They’d all be obscured by the cars.
Should be visible on the first panel, unless painted totally randomly out of sync to the right-pointing arrows.
But that would also trigger my sense of order, soooo… :-)
Maybe the arrows are covered by the cars.
Maybe the arrows are covered by the cars.
Not in the first panel.
If there were arrows, they should be visible in parallel to the arrows going to the right.
It’s a left-only lane, why would you have a blinker on?
Why would it be a left-only lane?
There are no arrows on the lane…And even if it was, you still have to indicate your desired direction, as the direction of the lane might not be clear to all traffic participants.
Because going forward would lead you into the railing and grass. You can literally only make a left or illegal right.
You’re the reason we have to add “coffee is hot” warnings on take away cups, mate.
You can literally only make a left or illegal right.
Why would turning right be illegal?
As far as we can see, it is a lane with no mandatory direction (which is the thing that has been bugging me in the first place).But, TBF, I believed that myself for a long time, only to have the called police give me a little crash course in traffic lane rules after I had a car crash in a somewhat similar situation…
Man, I could have saved like ten, or even fifteen seconds if the infrastructure was bigger.
Fantastic! You have a source?
Even more annoying is when the green car leaves 2+ car lengths in front of it so the car behind can’t get into the turn lane if they need to.
This is just one more instance where riding a motorcycle is nice. See also, parking.
Or walking, or cycling, or taking a train.
My bicycle is my most used form of transportation. I bike around 5K miles per year, more than I drive. If If it’s too far, my next choice is my motorcycle. If it’s really far, there is inclement weather, or I need to haul a significant amount of stuff, it’s my car.
Contrary example: all the dipshit drivers on the road and nothing between you and their vehicle.
The risk of becoming a meat crayon on the pavement is very real, but fortunately for me childhood trauma has given me an enormous appetite for risk and I feel most alive sitting atop an engine with wheels hurling down the highway with the risk of death or dismemberment lurking in my subconscious.
