Roland Orzabal, have you ever driven around Los Angeles? I learned to drive there and that was accepted procedure for left turns, because at least as of 1994 there were no left turn arrows anywhere that I remember ever finding. And if you didn’t pull into the intersection and turn when the light was red you were never, ever, ever, ever going to turn left because of all the traffic.
Nope. Sounds like LA’s traffic control authority needs to be shot, but that’s no different than any other major city I’ve been in, so there may be no good solution to the problem that anyone’s found thus far. I’d be interested to see the data, though, that says that letting one car turn left per cycle via sanctioned red-light running is more efficient than just having a protected left.
Just to clarify, I don’t sit there blocking the intersection, I drive until I can either do a U-turn, or turn left through a gap in traffic and spin around in a parking lot. If I don’t see a place where I’m likely to be able to do either, then I swallow my pride, pull straight into the intersection, and sit there waiting for the light (which, depending on the light configuration, I may no longer be able to see given that I’m sitting directly under it) to turn red. Every time I have to do this I feel like a moron, but I suppose that’s better than being an asshole.
Are any of you the type who likes to hug the corners tightly when walking in big cities, so that anyone walking toward you cannot possibly see you coming?
Can you explain exactly what it is you get out of this? Does it make every day an exciting game of lazer tag or something?
A pet peeve closely related to the OP.
Back in my slightly younger days, I did a lot of theater. I ended up in the chorus a lot, in the great big group scenes. In most of these group scenes, there comes a point where the whole group exits. Sometimes, the whole group is supposed to exit running.
And it never failed: thirty people are running off the stage, through a wing that is five feet wide, and the first three people STOP RUNNING the second they get off stage. This had the result of forcing the other 27 people to slow down to an awkward fake-run while enough space cleared off stage to allow the crowd to exit. It can actually be pretty funny for the audience. (“Guards! Seize the protagonists who just ran off that way” “YES SIR!” ::run, run, run:: ::shuffle, shuffle, shuffle:: ::finally disappear offstage:
Kids are especially bad at this. The second they’re off stage, they stop, turn around, and gape at the scene, blocking everyone trying to exit after them.
The law here says you run a red light only if both sets of tyres cross the line after the light has turned red. Therefore it is not running a red light if you move completely into the intersection when the light is green.
I would like to add that some people use sidewalks to travel, as well. We call it ‘walking’.
Not strolling, meandering, sight-seeing, shuffling, or the dread ‘mall walking’. If you are out to do any of those between 8 to 9, 11:30 to 1:30 or 4 to 6, you are wrong. (If you are sleeping in the subways at those times, you are also wrong; you have 20 other hours in the day, use them.)
I just do not understand people who walk four abreast on a city street, blocking the flow in both directions. Why do you do that? So you can talk? Well, it doesn’t work, does it, because one of you is always saying, ‘What?’ and leaning forward to hear the one on the other end, so that all four of you have to stop dead, along with everyone else on the block.
And you look so offended when someone slams into you. Clueless git.
Please refrain from using the sidewalks during these hours, for the convenience of the lock-kneed, hypertensive, type-triple-A tooth-grinding zombies who actually keep the lights on and the bills paid around here, and who find it difficult to stay focused when they have to think about anything more than 18 inches in front of their visual receptors.
Or stay to the right and walk in couples.
Stay to the right? OK, I guess you aren’t a New Yorker after all.