You can assume that the other traffic light turns red at the same time. You cannot assume that any other driver has any sense whatsoever.
no you cannot.
You should not assume the light is working at all, and perhaps everything is green in every direction. Though we can’t live with this and be sane, so we need to assume things that are reasonable, and expected. In this case I would say that the left turner should have reasonable assumption that the oncoming traffic is stopping, not just that the light has changed.
as I noted earlier, in my area asymmetrical timing is very common. it would be extremely unwise to assume the state of signals you can’t see.
Opticoms are by definition always setup this way even if they are infrequently triggered. Opticoms are activated by emergency vehicles; they turn every light (straight & turn arrows) green in the direction that the emergency vehicle is traveling while turning every opposing direction red to help move traffic out of the way & prevent so much slow down at intersections so that the emergency vehicle can get to the emergency. Depending upon road elevation & line of sight distance, they can be activated by an emergency vehicle blocks away even if that vehicle turns or stops before the intersection.
I’ve been ‘caught’ a couple of times by a cop who made a traffic stop on the street I was crossing. He still had his opticom activated so the light wouldn’t change for anyone else even though he was parked & out of his car already.
There are many parts of the U.S. that I haven’t driven in, but I’m astonished that this is the case. It seems incredibly dangerous. May I ask what state you are in?
I’m guessing Sugarland Texas.
Michigan. But I don’t think it’s done unless there’s also a left turn signal present.
Ah, ok, fine. Asymmetric timing is common here too, but that was the point - it always requires left turn control.
yeah, typically the way it works if you’re on the side with the shorter timing:
- the thru lanes will have the green light, while you wait in the left turn lane with a flashing yellow arrow* (indicating you can turn if clear but oncoming traffic has a green and the right of way)
- the thru lanes on your side will change to red, stopping thru traffic.
- you still have a flashing yellow arrow, indicating oncoming traffic is still flowing and has the right of way
- as the oncoming lanes change to yellow then red, your left turn arrow will change to steady yellow arrow, then red arrow.
at this point, if you are in the intersection awaiting your turn, you should be able to safely complete it and clear the intersection. assuming nobody in the oncoming lanes runs their red light, that is.
- older installations may have a three-element signal, using a flashing red ball to indicate this. those are being replaced because they don’t clearly indicate when your left turn lane is about to change from “proceed if safe” to “stop.”
By the way, this problem is why some cities in Florida, Minnesota, and Colorado have little blue lights next to their traffic signals. You can’t assume that the signal going in both directions is the same, so they have the little blue light attached to the signal turn on when the signal is red. That way, a police officer waiting at the far side of the intersection can tell when a driver went through the intersection on a red light.
According to my wife, there were no turn signals. The road in question had 2 lanes of traffic in either direction. Not sure how many lanes the cross street had. Also, not sure whether there was a left turn lane. But no arrows on the stoplights.
In a case where, say, W bound traffic has a longer green than E bound, do E,N, and S all wait while W continues. And then when W turns red, N and S get the green? Seems like it would work, but I had always assumed they turned red and green in pairs rather than asymmetrically. I guess any of the other folk wanting to turn right on red could…
that sounds like a massive fail on the part of whoever set up the signaling.
I was recently in a somewhat similar accident in the role of the left-turner - except, I saw that the guy was going to run the light and stopped. Then the guy who was trying to sneak through the left behind me hit me from behind. The red-light runner was especially egregious, too. An oncoming big rig was just slowly pulling into the intersection when the light turned yellow, and it had turned red long before the semi cleared the intersection. I was rolling forward trying to time it so I would roll through the instant he was clear when I saw an SUV behind him looking like he might not stop. I said out loud to no one, “He isn’t actually going through, is he?” But he was, and I hit the brakes, and got clipped (very minor damage) from behind. To be fair to the guy trying to turn illegally behind me, it’s a horrible intersection for turning left. At that time of day unless there are enough cars to get an arrow (which there weren’t) you can only turn left on the yellow, and the light cycle seems like it’s about 5 minutes.
If I were the driver being accused of running a red, I’d have come to the hearing with that information in hand.
I dunno, man. This was in a Chicago suburb, but in Chicago, there are any number of signal-controlled intersections where there are no designated turn lanes and no turn signal arrows.
There are some jurisdictions that use a flashing green light as an indication that only that direction may proceed. Such a light setup is indistinguishable from a normally-switched light system, so only the drivers who can see the flashing green light would know they have the sole right of way at that moment.
These are being phased out in favor of lights with arrows, but they still exist in several places I normally drive.
I’m talking about the longer green in one direction with no indication of such for the opposite direction.
That’s not true in every jurisdiction.
Yep, sounds about right. West gets a longer green than east while N & S twiddle their thumbs /check their email.
I have several I routinely travel. Upon inspection, most seem to be along frontage road intersections near the on/off ramps of the freeway. The light taking traffic away from the ramps are green longer and timed a bit with the lights for the ramps. Appears to be used to clear traffic out of the area.