Sorry, but to me that’s just boneheaded impatience. You make right hand turns from the right hand lane or lanes that are designated as right hand turn lanes. Turning from the not-quite right hand lane is a bullshit move city drivers do all the time and not only does it create a hazardous situation but it tends to make bad traffic situations worse. I don’t care how dainty you are about it.
Just because there is space to the right doesn’t mean that it is intended for there to be two cars side by side in the lane. A seperate right turn lane is marked by lines on the road. If there are no lines on the road then it is ONE lane there should only be ONE car at the intersection at a time. It is dangerous to have two cars in a lane intended for one.
In my book the honker is always rude if they are honking at people who aren’t doing anything wrong.
Isn’t it illegal to pass on the right anyway?
It’s not illegal to pass on the right if there is a clearly marked lane. If it’s a 4-lane road, it’s perfectly legal to pass on the right, but the left lane is for passing only and if you have to pass on the right someone is in the left lane that should not be.
“Passing on the right” is a concept that applies to driving on highways. It’s not applicable to city traffic.
Look at it this way: when you suffer this jackass’s abuse by blocking his right turn on red, you’re saving the pedestrians who are crossing from right to left whom he’d plow into while his head is turned to the right, as if his collar bones were fused into place, looking for his opening.
(that’s the unversal “he.” I’ve seen this collar-bone condition on a lot of suburban mom types, too)
Thanks for the “passing on the right” info.
Many years ago I was in a traffic accident caused by someone passing me on the right. It was a road with one lane of traffic moving in each direction and no turn lanes. The car in front of me stopped to make a left hand turn and had to wait about 30 seconds or so for traffic to clear. A car behind me decided to use the shoulder of the road and an indent from a driveway to pass us both on the right at the same time the car in front turned. A small fender bender resulted as I started to drive forward with out looking to my right to see if an idiot was trying to pass me. The police officer innovated gave him a ticket for “passing on the right” and filled out a report indicating that he caused the accident.
This accident took place in the city, not on a highway.
innovated? That is the oddest spell check error I have ever had.
The police officer involved…
My mother once got a ticket for passing on the right in the city. She was passing a car waiting to turn left. IIRC, there was no collision, but a cop saw her.
You really have to check your state Motor Code, but generally speaking it makes no difference whether it’s on a city road or a highway. It is illegal to pass on the right unless the right lane is a clearly marked lane. Many people think it’s illegal to pass on the right period. That is not true.
barbitu8 (love your name by the way)
That is exactly what I was thinking. That it is illegal to pass on the right if there isn’t a lane for it. It doesn’t matter if the lane gets bigger at the intersection and people think there is room for a car to pull up and turn right like muttrox is talking about.
Off to check my state Motor Code…
It’s probably illegal regardless, but I think when most people do it is when the road is rural. The car in front of them is making a left turn into a parking lot or a road (a road onto which one cannot turn right), so they just pass the car on the right. This isn’t particularly dangerous - no car would be coming from the other direction and turning left there, so there’s no car to look out for. The only problem is if a car is coming out of the parking lot and turning left onto the main road - that’s the only car one would need to look out for, in this situation.
Concur. I can’t quote code chapter and verse but I have been licensed in three states plus DC and the code prohibits driving off the “traveled portion of the road”, i.e., the shoulder. Even though passing on the right shoulder is a common practice to get by a stopped car, I knew one guy who was ticketed for it (in Michigan, IIRC). But I still think citing people for it is very rare.
I’m going to back up muttrox. When I lived in California, at many intersections (I particularly remember ones with bike lanes), the lane got wider, and the bike lane markings became dashed. Why are the markings and width changing, if not to allow cars to make right turns on red? The CA DMV has an online booklet, and this page comes closest to discussing the situation:
I think they’d mention it explicitly if you weren’t allowed to pass traffic going straight in order to make your right turn.
A couple other things California allows, that I don’t think most states do: It is legal to change lanes in an intersection. It is legal for motorcycles to “thread the needle”, i.e. drive on the white dashed lane markers to pass cars. Passing stopped cars to make a turn is kid’s stuff compared to that last one.
Yeah, but in your example there are markings on the road ZenBeam. Perhaps that is the case in California.
Here (south east) there are usually no marking on the road when cars do this. They just double up in one lane at the intersection.
I don’t think that I have ever even seen a bike lane in my state.
The SC Code provides as follows:
This is the Uniform Motor Code so it has been adopted in most states, except for some weird states such as California. 
Wow! Thanks everyone for your responses. I feel vindicated that waiting is the right thing to do. I’d like to clarify a few points that were made. I don’t wait in a right turn only lane so that I can bypass the correct left lane. When I’m in the right lane, it’s because I’m going to turn right into a driveway as soon as I clear the intersection. Also, if I can pull up a few feet, but stay out of the pedestrian crosswalk, I will do so. I just didn’t like it when a driver behind me would honk incessantly for me to drive into the intersection just to suit his/her schedule. I try to be a considerate driver and frequently let other drivers ahead of me. I’m never in too big of a hurry to piss off any other driver intentionally.
And you must remember that it is “You MAY make a right turn on Red AFTER Stop, if it is clear and safe to do so”!!!
In the OP, since there was a car in front of him, it was definitely not clear and safe. So the OP was completely in the right. That is why our creator has given us a finger that is longer than the rest.