Cost, Safety Concerns Make Left Turn on Red Prohibitive

Dear Street Smart: I find that left-turn signals can become very frustrating at times. You pull into the left-hand turn lane and the red arrow is on, which means you cannot proceed. You can, however, see down the road for over a mile and nobody is coming. If this were an unaided left-turn lane, it would be legal to turn. Why wouldn’t it be possible to have the red left-turn arrow blink so that one could pull up, stop and turn left if the oncoming traffic is clear?

R. Bruce Andrews

Balboa Island

One big reason is cost, according to Patricia Ryan, a spokeswoman for the California Highway Patrol. While some blinking left-turn signals do exist, she said, they are rare. That’s because each intersection graced with a blinking left-turn signal first must be evaluated in terms of speed limit, visibility, terrain and traffic conditions to determine whether leaving left turns to the discretion of drivers would be safe.

“We couldn’t just change” every intersection, Ryan said, “and the time and expense it would take to evaluate each one would be overwhelming. It’s not a bad idea, but I just don’t think it’s possible; state agencies are stretched as it is. Consequently, we’re trying to maximize our dollars.”

And why can’t all the lights be changed? Frankly, Ryan said, because not all drivers can be trusted to do the safe thing.

“We can’t say that a person’s judgment would always be good,” she said. “One person’s discretion could end up in a crash.”

Turning left against a red light is far more dangerous than turning right against one, she said, because it entails crossing lanes of oncoming traffic rather than just turning into the flow of traffic. Yet the past two years have seen a marked increase in the number of drivers who do it, Ryan said.

“Everyone is in a hurry. They want to get home in a hurry or get to work on time. They have less respect for the law and think they can make it just one more time. What they don’t realize is that just one more time could cost a life.”

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Dear Street Smart: My question concerns the northbound San Diego Freeway. At the Harbor Boulevard on-ramp, instead of a wide white line delineating the merge area, there is a regular dotted white line that gives the impression of another lane instead of just a merge lane. Even before the merge lane starts, therefore, cars will pass on the right to get ahead of the traffic. Then they will speed down the merge lane and have to stomp on their brakes at the end (usually way after the dotted lines have discontinued) to merge back into traffic. This is not only dangerous, but also very frustrating for those of us who go by the rules, and it definitely slows down traffic.

At the Euclid Street on-ramp to the southbound side of the freeway, on the other hand, the merge lane is painted differently and no one “cheats” in that way. My suggestion is to repaint the Harbor Boulevard lane in the same way the Euclid Street merge lane is painted.

Karen Wall

Anaheim

The problem with your suggestion, according to Rose Orem, a spokeswoman for Caltrans, is that the two types of markings are meant to delineate different things. The southbound lane extending from the Euclid Avenue on-ramp is striped with elephant tracks (long dashes) because it doesn’t merge into the lane next to it. The Harbor Boulevard on-ramp, however, flows into a lane that merges 1,600 feet later.

A sign on that short lane warns, “Lane Ends Merge Left.” Still, as you say, people speed up and then suddenly discover they have to merge, creating a bottleneck, Orem said.

Fortunately, she said, Caltrans is planning some improvements. A future project will extend that northbound lane to the next exit. Construction is expected to begin in 1998.