On my commute home from work, there’s one particular hellish intersection. Picture this: a divided four lane road that eventually comes to a stop light at a divided four lane highway. We’ll call this Intersection A. The road runs east-west, the highway runs sw-ne. As you drive east on the road, there’s a lighted intersection about a block away from the highway intersection. This is Intersection B.
The problem is that the entire road between Intersections A and B commonly gets completely filled, to the point that the people waiting at Intersection B can’t completely cross the intersection when the light is green. Maybe 2 cars can cross Intersection B on each given green light and be completely out of the intersection. Most people wait at Intersection B until they can actually cross and be out of the intersection, which is very difficult since the people waiting on the cross streen of Intersection B often jump in and take a right turn on the red and further fill up the road between Intersection A & B.
More people could get through on the green light if they’d just go ahead and block the intersection, rather than be polite about it and wait until there’s actually room. The lights are timed so that by the time the Red light shows up at Intersection B the bulk of the cars waiting will make it through the intersection completely. There may be a few seconds where cars block the intersection without having the green light, but not for long.
I hope this all makes sense - it’s difficult to describe. So I’m wondering this - Should the traffic just cross the intersection when the light is green, potentially blocking the intersection? Or should they wait, allowing the cars turning right on the Red light to potentially “grab” any space that opens up?
(I don’t know why I worry about such things. My usual way of dealing with this intersection is to leave work before it gets truly bad.)
Several years ago, San Franscisco handed out traffic tickets for “blocking the box”, and contributing to gridlock. There was a court ruling that forced the tickets to be thrown out, as apparently it wasn’t actually illegal, just rude. That may have changed since.
On the other hand, we have this from Rudy Guliani in New York, dated August, 1999:
As with a lot of these things, I suspect that it varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Whether you can actually clear the intersection or not before the light changes may or may not be a factor. Even if you do expect to be able to get through while the light’s still green, there’s the issue of emergency vehicles encountering you “loitering” in the intersection, as mentioned in the Guliani quote above.
Well a google search shows lots of places have laws prohibiting blocking an intersection. They basically say you can go through only when you can go through completely. Pueblo, Colorado Traffic Code , see section 1204. New York State rules say this:
**
I know you didn’t ask whether it was illegal or not and I’m guessing you already suspected this. To explicitly answer your questions, I’d say you should only follow the lawful procedure in this case.