As a driver, I love right-on-red. As a pedestrian, I hate it -- it generally results in drivers stopping past the stop line, or not stopping at all as they roll into their right turn, and many times they aren't even looking to the right for pedestrians, they are only looking to the left for traffic.

As much as I love the right-on-red as a driver, I think it should be ended because drivers aren't responsible enough to use it safely. Perhaps when (if?) self-driving cars are ubiquitous it can be revisited.

There are drivers that don't check for pedestrians. Then there are pedestrians who jaywalk blithely like Mary Poppins, sometimes in the dark, sometimes in black wear. In both cases, the driver is generally at fault.

IMO, pedestrians are obligated to have some sense of self-preservation, even though in theory drivers should fully accommodate all pedestrian antics. Is it really too much to ask for pedestrians to look left before crossing?

And if the pedestrian is a child?

If a child is old enough to be crossing the street without an adult present (holding their hand), then they're old enough to be looking both ways before crossing.

That was a kindergarten lesson, and in my experience, those kids tend to be better about it than most people are when they're older.

If they're not going to do that, what is stopping them from just wandering into a road nowhere near a traffic light anyway?

My own child is a runner and until she was six or so it was honestly terrifying to go outside with her. I want to live somewhere letting go of a four year old's hand isn't a death sentence. Incidentally this is what Anne hidalgo says she wants for Paris and it seems like a useful heuristic.

I don't know if that place exists like near any road they should cross safely, otherwise you just need to live where there is no car

>Is it really too much to ask for pedestrians to look left before crossing?

Yes, is that even a real question? A pedestrian with a walk signal should be able to cross without looking for traffic. They shouldn't need to anticipate that the car approaching a red light is going to just roll into the crosswalk without stopping.

I disagree on that, humans are humans and they make mistakes. When all the cars are automated, we could do that, otherwise it's just dangerous.

> there are pedestrians who jaywalk blithely like Mary Poppins

if this is a possibility for anyone who gets behind the wheel of an SUV

then perhaps we should raise the bar for licensing drivers until they all can handle such a regular occurrence

I am extremely wary of drivers. Years ago--before cell phones were ubiquitous--I saw a car around here start to pull out to a fire truck, one that had its lights and sirens goin.

Having said that, pedestrian wariness can carry one only so far.

Even worse than being a pedestrian is being a cyclist. Right on red makes it dangerous to get in front of the light queue by passing on the right

Or, we could just ban this unsafe practice of cutting in the light queue and make bicycles follow the rules of the road like other vehicles.

Then car drivers will complain that the slow bicycles are blocking them.

When I was a cyclist, at least when there were multiple lanes, I'd hop to the left of cars turning right.

When there is one lane, you do sort of have to pay attention to blinkers.

Well designed bike lanes, where they exist, typically already follow this pattern. If you're going straight it's pretty silly to be to the right of traffic that is turning right.

As another cyclist, agreeed, but to be fair, cyclists run reds and traffic controls all of the damn time. Shits maddening.

Check your local laws to make sure YOU actually know the law. I get yelled at in Colorado for obeying the law on my bike to a T. Stop signs operate as yields, red lights as stop signs. Why? Because as a cyclist the most dangerous time is when I’m stopped. I can see around far better than you can in a car and can safely get through stop signs and red lights in ways you cannot. Get hit a couple times by people turning right on red right into you and you might start to get it. The relative danger is also laughable, would you equate the danger of me on my bike running a red to a Ram 3500 running a red light?

This.

Thinking about the number of times a driver rolled through a stop sign or red light while looking at incoming traffic (or their phone) DURING THE TURN infuriates me.

If you were told that getting rid of it would lower pedestrian fatalities, and you believed that, would YOU want to take it away?

Sure, except Americans may also have a weird obsession with driving that makes them oblivious to pedestrians, whereas many other nations may be more aware of pedestrians and thus have fewer fatalities per capita. I have no data to back up such a statement. Just anecdotal experiences.

...pe-de-strians?

What's that? Walking people???

Have they lost their car?

You have to know what it is to see it. :-D

I found the statistics in the article were not presented in a coherent manner. I couldn’t tell if right on red had a greater impact or not.

If it's really pedestrian fatalities we're concerned about, we should be implementing red right-facing arrows, which are on when the walk light is on.

Right on red, unless that arrow is on. Perhaps a blinking yellow arrow for when it isn't, just to avoid the ambiguity.

Or, when you're walking into the road, maybe make sure that drivers nearby see you. I played Ingress and Pokemon Go for years, in the city, at night, for years. Perhaps it's that I knew it put me at heightened risk so I paid more attention, but I really have a hard time understanding why people think that drivers are the only ones who need to pay attention when they're in the street.

Because it leads to dead pedestrians. I walk a lot and right on red is a curse, drivers often only look left for traffic instead of right for pedestrians before turning. Coupled with hoods so high you can't even see kids or short people walking in front of your vehicle it's very dangerous.

The last two vehicles which nearly ran me over in a crosswalk have been pickup trucks... Not sure if they have shitty visibility or if pickup drivers are less likely to conceptualize there might be pedestrians....

I think there are two bigger problems here: people turning when there are pedestrians and the car size inflation. These are not inherent problems with right on red.

Yet right on red seems to correlate with drivers not paying as much attention to pedestrians and people getting killed https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S259019822...