Here in PA you may turn right at a redlight once you have made a full stop and if it is safe to do so and if it is not expressly prohibited by a sign. (There may be other aspects to it that I have been too lazy to type out, but you get the idea)
Are there any states in the US that do not have a similar law?
Somebody needs to confirm this for me, but I swear last time I was driving through St. Louis (which was, admittedly, about twelve years ago), right turns on red were prohibited.
I wasn’t able to locate a current ordinance prohibiting right turns on red, so we don’t have to worry about what happens if an ordinance forbids what a state statute expressly permits.
When the Right on Red law was first in effect in Missouri, such turns were illegal in the “St. Louis Downtown Area”. This was in the late 60’s. The downtown area was bounded by Tucker on the West and Washington on the North. As best I can remember anyway. I was taking my drivers test, having just moved into the state, and failed because I made a right on red into the boundry area. :eek: I came back the next day and the inspector just signed off the paper. So for a while at least the city ordinance outranked the state law.
Be careful when traveling even if the state your visiting does allow right turn on red.
I learned to drive in Colorado, and the rule says you may turn right on red into the right lane. In fact, you’re always supposed to turn right into the right lane and left into the left lane.
Headed off to college in California. The school had a road that ran all the way around the campus, feeding into the various parking lots. At various intervals, there were stubs roads going out to the main nearby streets.
I was approaching one of these stubs from the east as someone else approached from the west. We both had stop signs. We both stopped. The stub was 2 lanes each way, so when he started pulling out to make his left, I pulled out to make my right. He just about hit me, and I cussed him out roundly for turning into “my” lane.
I then discovered that California doesn’t control which lane you turn into. Stupid dangerous lack-of-a-law!
In seriousness, right(orleft)-on-red can’t work with the typical European layout, not only because there’s far more junctions where visibility is an issue, but also because of the culture that pedestrian crossings are given a seperate phase in the lights, and that when traffic is moving, there’s no reason to expect pedestrians to be there.
I learned to drive in California, and the rule was you could turn right on red into the right lane. In fact, you were always required to turn right into the right lane and left into the left lane. Did they change the law in California?