It was drilled into our heads in driver’s ed in high school that nobody ever “has” the right of way. The law only specifies who must yeild right of way to others.
The “I have right of way” idea, I’m pretty sure, leads to a bunch of accidents every year just because people who could avoid a crash instead think to themselves “I’ve got right of way, what does that jerk think he’s doing?” as that other, inattentive and probably at-fault driver barrels right towards them. “I have right of way” is pretty much the opposite of defensive driving.
On another note, if everybody else has to yeild right of way to people already in an intersection, then that answers my other lingering question about who needs to yeild to whom between a left-turning U-turner and a right-turner from the cross-street when both have green arrows. Whoever made it across the stop line last needs to yield, and since the left-U-turner will need to be almost finished with his/her turn for there to be any chance of collision (given reasonable speeds), the right-turner ought to wait.
I was once pulled over for entering an intersection when the light was green, then stopping to wait for my left turn opportunity. Actually, I only think I was pulled over for that, becuase the officer in question was a bit, shall we say, edgy and incoherent. Rather than go through the standard asking me if I knew why I was pulled over (also known as handing me my rope), he jumped right in indignantly, and told me he had pulled me over for two reasons. Reason number one was that I had waited too long to signal my turn. I have no idea what the required lead time is for turn signals, but I know I signaled before I entered the intersection, whatever that’s worth. I chose not to argue the point, and was the very picture of civility and courtesy, in part becuase I felt like he was trying either to intimidate me, or provoke me, which sucked. Anyway, before he could get to reason number two, he got another call, so he said he had to take it, and told me to “take it easy.”
My only possible guess is that reason number two was going to be the stop/left turn thing, because there’s nothing else I would have had time to do. The fact that he didn’t even bother to give me a warning makes me question whether it really is unlawful, although a social studies teacher told me later that week that I could have been cited for it.
So, I’m going with “probably illegal.” I personally am now paranoid about that intersection, and sometimes I just go straight there and take a left at the next one.
In PA and NJ, driver manuals recommend entering the intersection and turning when clear. They offer additional advice and I’ll paraphrase the advice that had an illustration:
Essentially, a left hand turn should have a softer radius than a right hand turn. A right hand turn looks very much like a quick 90degree right hand turn, whereas a left hand turn should have a smoother arc to it. You should not proceed so far out when waiting (or even if not waiting) that when you make the left you actually wind up making a hard radius/hard left. Whether you have to stop for traffic to clear, or you drive right into the intersection and turn, the arc should be much smoother when turning left than turning right.