On the route I take to work each morning, there is an intersection where there seems to be a bit of confusion that I run into at least once a week. The problem is that nobody seems to know who should have the right of way at this place and both people usually assume they do.
I drew up this image to help explain the situation. (forgive its general crappiness, I’m not an artist) Example Image
The problem is at an offramp from the interstate. Once you take this offramp, it turns into three lanes. Two of these go left, one goes to the right onto a 6 lane divided road (three lanes each direction).
When you go to the right on the offramp, it joins onto the main road as a new, fourth lane. About two car lengths into this new lane is a right turn onto a different secondary road.
The conflict occurs when a car from the main three lanes wants to turn right onto this secondary road as a car from the offramp is entering the fourth lane of the road. There are no yield signs are traffic lights if you’re turning right off the offramp. Who has to wait here?
It seems poorly planned that there is a right turn immediately after the offramp, but the biggest problem seems to be drivers from the main road not using their turn signals when they want to take the side road. However, the lack of yield signs or traffic signals leads me to believe those drivers coming from the offramp have the right of way in their new lane. But this seems like it’s too disruptive to traffic in the main three lanes if somone wants to turn right since there is only about two car lengths of road to get over to the other lane before the turn.
This is in Colorado, if it makes any difference. I couldn’t find any specific referrences to this situation in the driver’s manual.
Wrong. The car occupying a lane has right of way over any car entering the lane; in this situation, those turning right must yield. When a lane ends, the cars in it must enter another lane, and must yield to cars in that lane.
Yes, it’s a stupid, dangerous, and all too common design. WAG at what happened: someone on that road (probably a business) had enough influence to make sure that an existing route to his place of business was preserved when the interstate went in.
Nametag has it. Don’t think in terms of roads, think in terms of lanes. If you are in a lane, someone else getting into your lane has to yield to you.
We have these around here, and despite the stupidity of the local drivers (they literally do not understand how a 4 way stop works), they get this situation easily.
This is what I thought, and this is how I treat it. However, every morning, there is either a long line of cars waiting to take the right off of the offramp until all the traffic on the main three lanes clears up.
In the rare case there is nobody in front of me, I just go for it, and about half the time someone (without their turn signal on!) ends up honking at me because they are trying to take the right turn into the other road.
I have a similar situation on the way home as well. The offramp forms a third lane into the road I’m going to. Despite the fact there is another right turn lane meant for people who need to get over to the left of the other road immediately, there is always someone stopped in the lane I use (since I need to stay on the right of the road I’m turning on) waiting for traffic to clear so they can get to the left or center lane of the road.
I noticed that too, must be the image host, I have to right click, copy the shortcut, then past it in the address bar for some reason.
Fat Bald Guy’s strategy worked for me just fine. So did the second link you offered. I really wonder why I couldn’t see the image in your first link ( I use Win 2000, IE 6.0).
In any event, Nametag has it right. I am assuming no access or service road of any kind next to the interstate, correct?
Are you sure there’s not a yield sign about where the blue car is? We have (only a few) similar traffic situations here and there’s normally a yield (often ignored) at that point so that the traffic on the main road doesn’t back up. They have a lot of these up in Ohio (not the same design, but the same practical effect) and I don’t really recall if they must yield or not up there. I’ll check next week.
The situation I’m more familiar with is the blue car wants to be where the red car is and vice versa, then my rule in the earlier post holds true.
Someone should pit traffic engineers who do this stuff. Technically, what everyone is saying is right, in that the car in the lane has a right to the lane and others must yield. I am familiar with this dumb design and hate when I am the car in either lane. No win situation.
100% sure there’s no yield sign there. Neither is there one on the other side of the intersection that is a similar situation (but not a problem because there’s not a side road immediately after the offramp).
What really puzzles me is that it seems that cars on the main road should not even be able to turn right onto the side road because the white line is solid up until it is past the turn off. According to Colorado law, you can only change lanes when there is a dotted white line, but I find it hard to believe that the only place you can get to this side road is by taking the southbound interstate offramp…
The confusion here stems from the fact that a right ramp from a highway onto a new road (effectively making a right hand turn onto that new road) usually merges into the new road. Since the cars on the ramp have to enter the already established lanes of the new road, those cars must yield to the traffic already in an established lane. To remind people of this fact of life (it’s the law in NJ), a yield sign is usually put up at the end of ramps (in some cases, a stop sign even).
However, when the on ramp establishes a new lane, then the cars in the newly established lane have the right of way in this newly established lane. Cars switching to this new lane from the other lanes of the road must signal and only enter when clear.
Rather than putting up a yield sign on the ramp, the hiway authority should be putting up a “yeild to traffic in right lane” sign on the road to which this new lane has been established.
You should call/write the appropriate county/state/federal agency to get a sign added to this intersection to resolve the issue in some way.
I don’t know the technical details, but the image is apparently on a free image hosting service. Because of bandwidth costs, they don’t want people to be able to link directly and they block that. Otherwise, someone could link to download with each page view from their server.
The right click method allows someone to save a single copy(for webpages) – that reduces bw costs as future copies come from your host service.
Are you sure? I though the states adopted a more or less uniform traffic code. And in Michigan, it’s only a double white line you can’t cross. A single white line is okay, just not recommended. There are a lot of bad drivers here that don’t know this, and it causes me (and them!) problems. Of course if I’m wrong, then I’m the bad driver.
Yep, I’m sure. I just browsed through the driver handbook to make sure of that, here’s what it says regarding the subject:
Although, nobody here seems to be aware of this rule.
And with regard to my original question, this paragraph seems to suggest that I have the right of way when the offramp forms a new lane:
Now, if only I could tell the 10,000 people a day that mess that rule up at this intersection, I’d be all set! (and not be honked at for obeying the law!)
Bummer… I hate to keep deviating, but what really infuriates me here are people that don’t know which lane to turn into period when there are multiple, parallel turn lanes.
Oh, yeah, in the case of Michigan, I guess the “uniform traffic codes” doesn’t apply, or doesn’t apply where you are
Granted I’m quoting the SecState’s “What Every Driver Must Know” book and not actual code (easier to find and quote from).
