Jack Briant Reporter

Thursday, September 2, 2010

Left on Red


Have you observed this phenomenon? I have many times and there’s seems to be an element of entitlement to the practice. I say practice because you will see it explained away for several reasons. Some might be considered legitimate in the eyes of the risk taker because they are the last on line awaiting the turning arrow, and they just don’t want to endure another interval until their turn comes up again. Then there is the no left turning signal scenario where the driver has to wait for the oncoming traffic to open up to make their left.  When the light turns red, they scoot against the signal as the oncoming traffic has stopped, but it has turned green in the other direction. Today I experienced it with a tractor trailer, because he made his left when the light was clearly green for me. Annoying if you are on the other end of it.  The last reason is can occur when one of the cars with the green arrow is texting or just not paying attention to the light change. This can be the most dangerous when the second car truncates their turn and makes the left in front of the car ahead. A most aggressive practice to be sure and one that can result in an accident as the car in front wakes up or the car in the other direction accelerates once the light turns green for them.  
Left on red. It is an indicator that we are just too much in a rush to go nowhere, because a minute or two added to our schedule is not worth the risk of death. 

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