Right turn on red? With pedestrian deaths rising, US cities are considering bans
Almost every major city in the United States generally allows drivers to turn right at red lights, but that could be changing.
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Lights have to get smarter. Right on red is half the traffic flow in my area.* I always see so many situations where a green turn arrow would be appropriate, and yet the intersection is relying on the right-on-red rule instead, causing each car to pause when it should be flowing through. And even more situations where a light always stops the majority direction of traffic on what must be a fixed timer that poorly syncs with some upstream lights, because it always seems to turn red as a clump of cars arrives, even when there's almost always no cross traffic. Maybe right on red is more dangerous in some places, and we can get rid of it, but we have to replace it with some actual civil engineering instead of making traffic even worse.
*±100% margin of error, sample size 1
How the hell did you get 0.5 cars going right on red? Did a car just plow through multiple houses between going straight and turning right at an intersection?
Your -2 comment score leads me to believe some people didn't get your joke. I'll explain it, which we all know will make it funnier.
The previous comment mentioned their observation of half of the traffic moving through right on red and, later in parentheses, said this was based on n=1, i.e., based on the observation of a single vehicle. I'm 100% certain that was a joke.
The follow-up comment was also certainly a joke. They're pointing out that the commenter observed one car and then made the claim half of cars use right on red, so they're jokingly asking how exactly half of one car made it through.
Get it? Now stop downvoting the dude, stats are great, stats dad jokes are better.
Its acting like both a wave and a particle
Yes, but with a ±100% margin of error, that means right on red traffic could be anywhere between 0 and 100%. I think it's a safe assumption that with n=1 it's one of those extremes, not fractional cars.
And today I learned that people should joke around more with statistics.
Totally agreed, and from the pedestrian side of things, civil engineering would be helpful too.
Our roads are too fucking wide for pedestrians. Give me some pedestrian islands and raised crosswalks.
I'm more interested in giving pedestrians a direct route that doesnt need to cross fast traffic.
fixed timer that poorly syncs with some upstream lights
This has gotta be the number one traffic issue in the US. Our timer lights are just garbage and we so rarely use sensor lights. Our traffic light setups always seem overcomplicated but not over engineered.
Pedestrian signals are slow too. Have to wait a long time to get the WALK signal, and its rarely necessary as it's already illegal to not let a pedestrian go at a crosswalk if you're turning into it, in my state.