I am occasionally the guy inching forward at a light, even if I’m not the first in line. The reason is radio reception. Sometimes there’s interference from god-knows-what, and if you inch forward a little, or a little more, you can get it to clear up.
As far as turning left is concerned: as others have said, you pull into the intersection, to the point where you would start to turn. You sit there until there’s a break in traffic. If there is not break you wait for the light to change, when oncoming traffic has stopped, then you immediately turn. You are not yet in the way of any cross-traffic (but keep an eye out for pedestrians). I have not encountered any state where this is illegal, and I have not encountered any circumstance in which it doesn’t make sense.
Now let’s try to get people to use a central turning lane correctly.
Except in this case the turn was started on a green light by pulling into the intersection. That’s the point–sometimes traffic is too heavy to get through the turn unless you start before you see a break in the flow.
One other reason that I sometimes inch forward at an intersection is that sometimes my radio reception is no good, and if I go forward a teeny bit, it improves.
Have you tried a tinfoil hat? An orange on the antenna? Praying to the radio gods?
That’s what I thought, but my entreaties to the sheriff and the State Dept. of Transportation resulted in only a statement that if they allowed bicycles to trigger the sensor, every damn deer within a mile would too. Apparently, preventing deer from crossing is more important than allowing motorcycles to.
However, I haven’t tried putting my bike down on the pavement in a horizontal position yet. I’ll feel pretty silly next summer if that doesn’t work and I’ll direct all laughter to your email.
shrug Hey, it works. I drive an older van, and the radio isn’t much good. Perhaps if I had a nicer car it wouldn’t do that, I don’t know. But my radio reception goes in and out, and if I move a bit it changes.
I see a variation on this. People sometimes stop waaaaay short of where they should, allowing 2-3 car lengths between them and the car in front. These people seem to intend to come to a full stop that far back, and there they stay.
At first.
Then, once everyone has filled in behind them, they roll forward a car length or so and stop again.
Laboriously, everyone else puts there cars back into drive and rolls forward.
Then this person does it again, closing up the last of the space.
Once again, everyone either rolls forward instead of adjusting the radio or whatever they’ve been waiting for a red light to tackle. Or they stay put and let a stupid-looking gap open in front of them.
Spandex??!! :eek: Someday, **Q.E.D., **we must meet in person. I’m far from that kind of {shudder} “biker”. To me, a “bike” is closer to a Harley. {cue worshipful angel chorus}
Then you should be ecstatic about this newfangled invention called a “CD player”. It fits in the car dash! Amazing! No fadeouts in tunnels! Better than an 8-track! A 4-track even! A 2-track?!
On the subject of the left-turn debate, the way I understood it (and I’m canadian, too) is that if your front wheels are in front of the stop line while the light is green, you are legally involved* in the intersection, whereupon if the light turns amber then red while you are there, you have right of way to get your ass out of there before cross traffic starts.
S^G
*I know there’s a better word for this, but can’t or the life of me think what it is.
I am fairly sure that your cite has their Driver’s Handbook cite mixed up. The section they quote is very similar to NYC Don’t block the box campaign from the 1980s. You do not enter an intersection unless you can clear the other side. It does not matter if you are going straight or turning, you do not enter the intersection if when the light changes you are stuck in the middle with no place to go, you can be cited for causing gridlock.
Looking at the 2008 California Driver’s handbook they are fairly silent on the subject, but I did find this passage that addresses the subject of a left turn
So reading these cites what I come up with (along with many many years of making left turns in California) is that assuming the roadway you are turning left onto is NOT backed up, and stopped, and if you were to turn left, you would be able to clear the intersection, it is legal to pull into the intersection to wait for either a break in traffic, or the light to turn. At that point the left turner must clear the intersection as soon as it is safe to do so.
However on left turns the California DH has this to say:
Which might make you think that you are not allowed into an intersection to turn left without stopping, however the picture that accompanies the sections shows a stop sign, which explains the stop first comment.
Add Alberta to the list of places where if you waited behind the stop line to make your left turns, you’d wait a very, very long time. You roll in on the green, you wait for your break, and you clear the intersection after people have stopped running the amber and fresh red. I’ve done this often enough around police cars to be fairly sure that it’s legal here. Maybe the idiots who get hung up in the intersection and block all the traffic learned to drive at the same place you did, Diogenes.
Oh yeah, inching forward - I also don’t know why people do this (I think it is the impatience thing, too), but as a stick driver, it pisses me right off. I’m not de-clutching and rolling my car forward two inches repeatedly throughout the light; I might not even have the car in gear if it’s a long light. I come off the clutch when it’s time to move, and not a second before.
