So the town next to me has signs on the intersections that ban u-turns AT NIGHT (between 9pm and 3am in fact). I have been racking my brains since I saw them to try and work out the reasoning behind this, to no avail.
Obviously I see the point of banning u-turns during rush hour, but why at night ? Its by no means a big night life location. Its a quiet SF Bay Area suburb with maybe one bar, and if completely dead at night (though isn’t a residential area, the part of the road that has the signs is a two-lane main street going through a commercial district with shops and restaurants.
Two ideas leap to mind.
First it is an anti-cruising ordnance. Designed to keep them damn kids and their cars away from there (and off my lawn damn it!)
The second would be part of an anti prostitution ordnance. Same reasoning as above, give the police an excuse to bust a John making a U-turn to pick up a girl.
The cruising argument makes very vague sense, the “powers that be” in that town do seem to live somewhat in fear of the more “ethnic” residents of nearby less affluent suburbs. Though I can’t see how no doing removing the power to d u-turns is going stop anyone (I mean the last I heard the ability to go round the block was not something that is learned at age 30).
I lived in Concord back in the 80s when cruising was just becoming a nuisance issue. The folks in Pleasant Hill thought the other towns were just chasing kids off their proverbial lawns, and invited them all over to cruise Pleasant Hill, thinking the extra traffic would be good for business.
IIRC, there was just one single cruise night of total gridlock on Contra Costa Blvd. before the city council had an emergency meeting and enacted and anti-cruising ordinance. The no-U-turn-at-night signs were they main tool they used to control the traffic & direct it on its way.
I’ve actually seen (though they’re too far away for me to go take a picture of and post) signs that say “No Cruising Zone - No U-Turns between 8pm and 3 am”.
Wait… cruising is considered bad? Did not know that, every couple on moths I like to just drive around at night and listen to music (quiet enough so as not to disturb anyone, of course) when it’s past safe to take walks. I had no idea I was doing something wrong (or “wrong”). I can’t see why this is frowned upon, especially at 2AM (and in a commercial district at that). It’s not like people are revving their engines with their brights on near people’s houses.
Or does cruising denote something else that I’m missing? Wikipedia isn’t too clear on this.
Imagine a couple of thousand cars converging on the main street of one town from miles around, driving up & down the street over & over at about 5 mph tops, where the whole idea is to see & be seen in a big social gathering on the street. Completely blocks any other local traffic, impedes emergency vehicle access. And there were lots of folks for whom that was their main entertainment, every single weekend. That was Cruising, in its heyday.
When i lived in Vancouver in the 1990s they had anti-cruising rules in effect on one of the main drags, Robson Street.
It wasn’t a “No U-Turn” law, because there were no u-turns allowed on that street anyway. What they had instead were signs disallowing right turns at certain intersections. The aim was to stop people going around the block and cruising down the same few blocks of Robson over and over again.
I think the rules were only in effect on Friday and Saturday nights.
