• Chee_Koala@lemmy.world
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    38 minutes ago

    “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.

    • Venator@lemmy.nz
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      14 hours ago

      It’s to save fuel…

      I’d imagine any fuel it saves would be nullified by extra ambulance rides from red light turners hitting pedestrians however…

    • yenahmik@lemmy.world
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      22 hours ago

      Wait until you hear about left turns on red being allowed from 1 way street …

      • Kairos@lemmy.today
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        21 hours ago

        Turns on red are allowed if you don’t cross over an opposing direction. People call it right turn on red because 99.999% of the time it’s a right turn.

        • yenahmik@lemmy.world
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          17 hours ago

          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…

          • NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world
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            3 hours ago

            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.

          • cravl@slrpnk.net
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            6 hours ago

            Correct. The one place I get to do it sometimes is getting off the highway onto a diverging diamond.

    • farmgineer@nord.pub
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      21 hours ago

      What reason could there be to allow you to legally bypass a red signal?

      An oil crisis decades ago where they didn’t want cars idling at lights burning gas

      • lps2@lemmy.ml
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        2 hours ago

        It also significantly speeds up the flow of traffic and eases congestion. Right on red is one of the best things the US has done in regards to easing congestion - now if only we’d invest in more public transit specifically trains/lightrail so they would be more viable. For example, I was just in Atlanta and the time difference between getting an Uber from the airport to my hotel was maybe 10 minutes. Here in Denver that difference was almost an hour which is unacceptable, I and most others can’t just absorb an extra hour or two into their commute

    • Canaconda@lemmy.ca
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      22 hours ago

      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.