I love it when you sit in the rain for 3 minutes, obediently waiting for a walk signal, only to have some jerk who just showed up plow through the crosswalk right when the light changes like it's his god given right.
The fight to #BanRTOR may literally be the hill I die on. When drivers are sometimes allowed to turn right on red, then they will always assume they can turn right on red, regardless of any other cues in their environment.
If we truly want people to follow instructions, then those instructions must always be consistent. Red must always mean stop. It cannot be conditional.
(also, forgot to mention: a flashing yellow right arrow could be a distinctive phase from a no-right-turn solid red, for all the reasons you say)
@DrTCombs In Canada RTOR still 'requires' stopping first. Is this not the law in the U.S.?
@serial technically, yes, stopping is required. but no one seems to care.
@DrTCombs
I'm glad I don't have to drive much anymore because there's so much pressure from other drivers to drive in ways that are unsafe for cyclists and pedestrians. If RTOR were eliminated it would reduce so much stress for me.
Like, I really don't want to pull up and block the crosswalk while waiting to turn! What's the point of a crosswalk if you don't keep it clear? But it is expected that you WILL turn right on red if you possibly can.
@artemis I get it, but take your reluctance to annoy other drivers and multiply it across entire transportation systems and you get what we have today -- transport professions, policies, and infrastructures that prioritize convenience and comfort for drivers over the safety of everyone else.
when I drive, I literally do not care if my refusal to endanger pedestrians & cyclists with my car pisses other drivers off. What are they going to do to me? I'm in a steel roll cage surrounded by airbags!
@DrTCombs
Like I said, I'm much happier not to deal with it at all: drivers in my city are very aggressive in general and pissing them off on the road can definitely get you caught in road rage situations surprisingly easily. I know people who have been shot at for pissing off the driver behind them. 😬
@DrTCombs
Honestly I feel like I'm not communicating properly here, and I don't have the brainpower to fix it.
I do my best to drive safely and consciously of others, but the more conscious I have become, the more driving has become an awful experience because driving safely literally angers people.
@DrTCombs
That's not a complaint at pedestrians or cyclists: that's car culture run absolutely out of control.
@artemis yeah, that's a good point. insisting on driving safely isn't going to fix car culture.
where I am I'm unlikely to be shot at for being a safe driver, but I can imagine it coming to that elsewhere and that does royally suck.
@DrTCombs
hmm.
that puts me in mind of a few things that are now just coming together
I was very young when right-turn-on-red became a thing, but I remember it as the era of huge incandescent lights and glass lenses
fast forward many years, when only very very recently have I started to see things like flashing yellow arrows for left turns which phase, back in the day, would have been signalled with a full green
LED signals offer a much more compact set of options that I think we have only barely begun to explore