I hate how road laws are inconsistent everywhere in the country.
Like one city, you can't do a u turn, but in another city, you can do a U-turn as long as you scream out of your window to the Beastie Boys.
this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2026
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But states rights hurr durr!
Yeah, the inconsistency is literally a problem for public safety. And it gives automatic excuses for car drivers following rules they may be used to from another state. Absolutely wild.
New Jersey has some strange laws
you can't make a u-turn in my town but you can in all the surrounding towns.
Where I live, some stop signs have a rectangular white sign underneath them that says "except for right turn" which means you don't have to stop if you're turning right. Works OK for locals because we know that exception is there, but people driving there for the first time have no fucking idea and all they see from the cross street is the back of the stop sign, so they assume the other person has to stop.
As if clueless Portland drivers would even notice. The intersection outside my house in north Portland is no turn on red, the big sign declaring this is hanging right over the intersection, and like every fifth car just ignores it or doesn't see it.
I really hate getting honked at by the car behind me because I'm not turning right when there's a no turn on red sign.
Dude they turn left across the max tracks on Yamhill downtown by Nordstrom all the time even though there are big no left turn signs.
And what is the aversion to turn signals in this city? I ride a bike and religiously use hand signals.
Bold of you to assume drivers still know what those mean
Yeah, getting rid of turn on red kinda requires adding light up no turn signs (like what you might see at a rail crossing).
"right turns on red (after a full stop, when clear and not otherwise posted) are legal in nearly every state", Really? Really!? I never knew this and.. I don't know but, this just sounds insane. how long do folks have to wait for red to clear, 2 hours? What reason could there be to allow you to legally bypass a red signal? Are the signal routines programmed so bad? Why? Why is this a thing? I'm baffled. hahahaha
Locally, if both pedestrians and a crossing motorized lane get a green light, there's a flashing blue light for the motorized lane that comes on together with the green, explaining you to look for those pedestrians. And running a red light is only allowed during calamity like letting services pass.
edit:
Lots of reactions, none of which really explain why their local traffic law team chose to weaken the message of a red light instead of upgrading their signal routines. Its all stopgaps to ease congestion (and something about emissions, lol). You need to safeguard some ez rules, like red is no. Now red is only no sometimes. there should be about 50k choices you make before you chose to diminish the power of a red light, for example: having the lights know when you approach? And have them know when there is a big line waiting, so it can green more folks at the same time? the 2-1 downvote ratio make me think that folks feel like it's either right on red or wait in traffic forever. That's the carbrain talking, y'all, we can all have both :)
Wait until you hear about left turns on red being allowed from 1 way street ...
Turns on red are allowed if you don't cross over an opposing direction. People call it right turn on red because 99.999% of the time it's a right turn.
which makes just as much sense as right turns. possibly more, actually.
It's onto a one way street around here. You don't need to be turning from a one way.
I'm pretty sure it's one-way to one-way. Otherwise you'd be crossing oncoming traffic who might have a green light while you have red...
Correct. The one place I get to do it sometimes is getting off the highway onto a diverging diamond.
Sorry I was too sleepy to reply and got lights wrong 😅. Ive fixed it.
They'll only have a green if theres an advance straight, but why would they have an advance? They could add a no left on red sign if needed. They might also want to turn right in red which you need to watch for.
We can do it here. We both have reds, you can turn left onto the 1 way. It feels weird though so I dont usually do it.
What reason could there be to allow you to legally bypass a red signal?
Poorly designed cities with stroads would become gridlocked if the the busier traffic route had to stop for every single person turning right. Merge lanes aren't always viable.
Not saying I agree with it, jsut answering your quesiton.
But with turn on red it has to stop anyway, turn on red needs a full stop first.
I always do, but the amount of people i watch roll through is staggering.
What reason could there be to allow you to legally bypass a red signal?
An oil crisis decades ago where they didn't want cars idling at lights burning gas
It's to save fuel...
I'd imagine any fuel it saves would be nullified by extra ambulance rides from red light turners hitting pedestrians however...
European equivalent would be left on red, I'd imagine.
You do know most European countries are right hand drive?
to my knowledge i though just uk, india, and japan ride on the left.
There are quite a few more, most of the old British colonies in the Pacific and southern Africa, plus southeast Asia.
Portland is so good at introducing new laws that make the busses slower that drivers won't follow because nothing is enforced and existing traffic laws already would protect pedestrians if they were actually enforced. Turns out no amount of PBOT meddling will make up for police that don't do their fucking jobs. Fuck off pbot. I almost miss ODOTs not giving a single fuck about our road maintenance and actively hating transit.
Also just having the guts to close city center to cars would solve basically everything but nobody has the balls.
You should be directing your ire toward PPB/PPA for not doing their jobs.
They have more funding than ever and have had 70-80 fully funded sworn openings that they refuse to fill. And somehow get away with not doing their fucking jobs.
Then you have assholes like this:
Believe me I have more than enough ire for them.
I just finished a short walk in Reykjavík. We could have something like this, but we choose to kill the close-knit society.
Good. Last time I was in the US I was nearly run over by a woman wanting to turn right on red.
I'm nearly run over at least once a week within a few minutes of home by people blowing past the stop line on a clearly signed and light-controlled no right on red turn while I'm in the crossing on my signal
I often chase them down and to try and yell at them. I file police reports for most. nothing seems to have changed
Get a chair, sit there for awhile, record a cop doing it and report that.
Might have more luck getting something done.
Pedestrian life is absolutely negotiable. This is exactly an example of that negotiation.
Is there any research on the danger of right on red? Theoretically existing laws prevent unsafe acceleration so any pedestrian interaction from a full stop would happen at well below 10mph. Practically, that's not always true so I do think that it makes sense to disallow it case by case (area with high pedestrian traffic, obscured crossing), but overall it doesn't feel much worse than turning into a driveway across a sidewalk.
YES. OMG so many studies.
https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/1322/dot_1322_DS1.pdf
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S000145752400455X
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/03611981251398754
And more but you get the point and that's not even getting into non US countries where road standards are more pedestrian-centric.
The conflict arises because at a red light all the driver's attention is left watching for oncomming traffic making it easy to miss a pedestrian on the right - a pedestrian that technically has the rightaway. And if viability is low - say it's dark, raining, foggy, or you drive an SUV with that giant frame bar running along the side of your windshield - it's easy to miss someone in the crossing. Especially if they are low because they are a child or in a mobility chair. Safest thing to do is not have pedestrians and vehicles competing for the same space at the same time.
Portland is in a rainforest, lots of rain and foggy days.
Clearly making a thing that is already illegal double illegal will give the desired results.
from a full stop
Lol not only do most people never come to a full stop before turning right on red, but also I've known many many people who don't even realize you have to stop before doing it (they think "right on red" means you can treat it as a green light if you're turning right). The whole danger to pedestrians is that the drivers are looking left to see if cars are coming from that direction and won't even see the pedestrian until they're splattered across their bumper.
Some intersections where I live have signs that say "right turn on red after complete stop" which pisses me off that's always the case. The signs imply that otherwise you don't have to stop before turning right.
Idk why we cant just have dedicated right turn signals in this country
In Canada you can turn right on reds everywhere except Quebec. I spent 1 weekend in montreal and I saw 2 accidents. Both caused by left turn drivers pulling out into oncoming traffic despite many pedestrians crossing in their way.
GF and I were the pedestrians crossing the 2nd time. I saw the mouth breather pull up and I just grabbed my gf and boogied. 15 seconds later BANG!
Your info is out of date. Right turn on on red is legal in Québec sine 2003 except on the island of Montreal and in places where it's indicated. The stupid PQ wanted to do like the Americans and the ROC so they allowed it everywhere except the Montreal island.
And as a cyclist and pedestrian, I hate that so much. I live in Montreal and can immediately feel less safe as soon as I get off the island. Lots of motorists will try to turn right when pedestrians and cyclists can go straight. With right on red, there is not a moment when a pedestrian ever have a safe phase to cross. They always have to deal with car drivers trying to zigzag between legally crossing pedestrians.
I hate this change so much. I wish it was never made legal in the first place.
Do pedestrians get a dedicated cross phase on the island? Don't they still have to wait for green which also gives the vehicle a chance to turn (when clear)? Or are these specialized right turn lights?
We have a few in Toronto but I can count on one hand how many of those we have.