As if clueless Portland drivers would even notice. The intersection outside my house in north Portland is no turn on red, the big sign declaring this is hanging right over the intersection, and like every fifth car just ignores it or doesn’t see it.
I really hate getting honked at by the car behind me because I’m not turning right when there’s a no turn on red sign.
Yeah, getting rid of turn on red kinda requires adding light up no turn signs (like what you might see at a rail crossing).
Portland is so good at introducing new laws that make the busses slower that drivers won’t follow because nothing is enforced and existing traffic laws already would protect pedestrians if they were actually enforced. Turns out no amount of PBOT meddling will make up for police that don’t do their fucking jobs. Fuck off pbot. I almost miss ODOTs not giving a single fuck about our road maintenance and actively hating transit.
Also just having the guts to close city center to cars would solve basically everything but nobody has the balls.
“right turns on red (after a full stop, when clear and not otherwise posted) are legal in nearly every state”, Really? Really!? I never knew this and… I don’t know but, this just sounds insane. how long do folks have to wait for red to clear, 2 hours? What reason could there be to allow you to legally bypass a red signal? Are the signal routines programmed so bad? Why? Why is this a thing? I’m baffled. hahahaha
Locally, if both pedestrians and a crossing motorized lane get a green light, there’s a flashing blue light for the motorized lane that comes on together with the green, explaining you to look for those pedestrians. And running a red light is only allowed during calamity like letting services pass.
edit:
Lots of reactions, none of which really explain why their local traffic law team chose to weaken the message of a red light instead of upgrading their signal routines. Its all stopgaps to ease congestion (and something about emissions, lol). There are other ways my brothers and sisters and everyone in the mix. We need to safeguard some ez rules, like red is no. Now red is only no sometimes. There should be about 50k choices you make before you chose to diminish the power of a red light. The 2-1 downvote ratio make me think that folks feel like it’s either right on red or wait in traffic forever. That’s the carbrain talking, y’all, we can all have it better than that.
Wait until you hear about left turns on red being allowed from 1 way street …
which makes just as much sense as right turns. possibly more, actually.
It’s onto a one way street around here. You don’t need to be turning from a one way.
I’m pretty sure it’s one-way to one-way. Otherwise you’d be crossing oncoming traffic who might have a green light while you have red…
Correct. The one place I get to do it sometimes is getting off the highway onto a diverging diamond.
Sorry I was too sleepy to reply and got lights wrong 😅. Ive fixed it.
They’ll only have a green if theres an advance straight, but why would they have an advance? They could add a no left on red sign if needed. They might also want to turn right on red which you need to watch for.
We can do it here. We both have reds, you can turn left onto the 1 way. It feels weird though so I dont usually do it.
What reason could there be to allow you to legally bypass a red signal?
Poorly designed cities with stroads would become gridlocked if the the busier traffic route had to stop for every single person turning right. Merge lanes aren’t always viable.
Not saying I agree with it, jsut answering your quesiton.
European equivalent would be left on red, I’d imagine.
You do know most European countries are right hand drive?
I just finished a short walk in Reykjavík. We could have something like this, but we choose to kill the close-knit society.
Pedestrian life is absolutely negotiable. This is exactly an example of that negotiation.
Is there any research on the danger of right on red? Theoretically existing laws prevent unsafe acceleration so any pedestrian interaction from a full stop would happen at well below 10mph. Practically, that’s not always true so I do think that it makes sense to disallow it case by case (area with high pedestrian traffic, obscured crossing), but overall it doesn’t feel much worse than turning into a driveway across a sidewalk.
YES. OMG so many studies.
https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/1322/dot_1322_DS1.pdf
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S000145752400455X
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/03611981251398754
And more but you get the point and that’s not even getting into non US countries where road standards are more pedestrian-centric.
The conflict arises because at a red light all the driver’s attention is left watching for oncomming traffic making it easy to miss a pedestrian on the right - a pedestrian that technically has the rightaway. And if visability is low - say it’s dark, raining, foggy, or you drive an SUV with that giant frame bar running along the side of your windshield - it’s easy to miss someone in the crossing. Especially if they are low because they are a child or in a mobility chair. Safest thing to do is not have pedestrians and vehicles competing for the same space at the same time.
from a full stop
Lol not only do most people never come to a full stop before turning right on red, but also I’ve known many many people who don’t even realize you have to stop before doing it (they think “right on red” means you can treat it as a green light if you’re turning right). The whole danger to pedestrians is that the drivers are looking left to see if cars are coming from that direction and won’t even see the pedestrian until they’re splattered across their bumper.
Some intersections where I live have signs that say “right turn on red after complete stop” which pisses me off because that’s always the case. The signs imply that otherwise you don’t have to stop before turning right.
Clearly making a thing that is already illegal double illegal will give the desired results.
In Canada you can turn right on reds everywhere except Quebec. I spent 1 weekend in montreal and I saw 2 accidents. Both caused by left turn drivers pulling out into oncoming traffic despite many pedestrians crossing in their way.
GF and I were the pedestrians crossing the 2nd time. I saw the mouth breather pull up and I just grabbed my gf and boogied. 15 seconds later BANG!
Your info is out of date. Right turn on on red is legal in Québec sine 2003 except on the island of Montreal and in places where it’s indicated. The stupid PQ wanted to do like the Americans and the ROC so they allowed it everywhere except the Montreal island.
And as a cyclist and pedestrian, I hate that so much. I live in Montreal and can immediately feel less safe as soon as I get off the island. Lots of motorists will try to turn right when pedestrians and cyclists can go straight. With right on red, there is not a moment when a pedestrian ever have a safe phase to cross. They always have to deal with car drivers trying to zigzag between legally crossing pedestrians.
I hate this change so much. I wish it was never made legal in the first place.
