As was foretold, we've added advertisements to the forums! If you have questions, or if you encounter any bugs, please visit this thread: https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/240191/forum-advertisement-faq-and-reports-thread/
Options
Traffic Law Question
RT800
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So this has been bugging me for years and I don't know where to look it up, so I thought I'd submit it to the wisdom of internet strangers.
Does a car making a right with a YIELD sign have to yield to cars making a left across traffic?
I ask because it doesn't make sense to me that they should have to, and almost every time I do it the car making a left just sits there or people behind me start honking like I'm an asshole but... then why is the yield sign there?
Helpful graphic:
Does the green car wait for blue to turn, or does blue wait for green?
Does a car making a right with a YIELD sign have to yield to cars making a left across traffic?
I ask because it doesn't make sense to me that they should have to, and almost every time I do it the car making a left just sits there or people behind me start honking like I'm an asshole but... then why is the yield sign there?
Helpful graphic:
Does the green car wait for blue to turn, or does blue wait for green?
RT800 on
0
Posts
though I suspect in practice that the driver in the blue car would wonder why the hell the green car isn't going
If the blue car has a turn signal though (as in, a green arrow traffic light) Then the green car would have to yield, but there's no lights in your diagram so I assume that's not the case. If its a busy enough road for this to be a problem, the yield sign is maybe a Band-Aid for a street that should have a medium to allow turning cars to not block traffic.
1) Break in the double yellow, a left turn lane, or the vertical street going all the way through (so a full 4 way intersection).
2) A median, often triangular, between the lane with the red and green cars and the lane going straight through the intersection to their left.
I'm in the DC area, and the rule here is the right of way belongs to whoever wants it more. In the depicted situation red will drive around green while holding the horn down.
(In sane places practice is if blue hasn't turned yet, green has time to go and should. If blue has begun their maneuver, green should wait. It's not a true alternate merge; green does need to yield to blue.)
Something that is a similar setup is a lot of on-ramps, at least along the I-75 corridor.
You have the main E-W road crossing the freeway, typically either divided or five lanes with different ramps splitting or merging on. Westbound traffic getting on the Southbound interstate has a blinking yellow or protected left to turn onto the ramp. Eastbound traffic getting on that ramp has a lane that merges into the ramp.
The eastbound traffic is doing the merge, so they put an explicit Yield sign there so there is no confusion that the car already accelerating up the ramp has right of way because when they go they are going. This looks like it could be a similar setup / philosophy?
It's not just one area, either. I see this setup all over the place where I live and it's never made sense to me.
I guess I'm supposed to yield, but it just seems dumb. There's no green arrow for them, and most of the time they can't cross anyway due to oncoming traffic.
And sometimes I'm the blue car instead of the green, which makes it even more dangerous to be confused.
Edit: or I guess, are they all old roads, since you say they're all over.
There's some variables in the layout. Like sometimes the blue car might have a left turn lane to wait in, but there isn't a light or anything. It'd at least make more sense if there was a light.
So either your area's DOT is underfunded (likely) or the local civil engineers are malevolent creatures of darkness (absolutely)
Sure, it's less intuitive if you need to make a left turn, but the right of way in the crossing is much clearer.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
The old jersey left.
But here we have intersections where the yield sign is missing and the green car is instead behind a dotted white line across their lane that has the same meaning.
The green car's lane is also typically separated from the main road by a small triangular island too.
The green car should yield, but you tell the green car that.
Example: https://www.google.com/maps/place/3603+Banks+Rd+north+carolina+google+maps/@35.6353108,-78.7091375,3a,75y,109.8h,87.96t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sMiVvRqdIOr_sRM8CZFnRVQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!4m2!3m1!1s0x89ac89798e9e6043:0xeb57b483de9466b2
Not sure how much this helps with traffic flow, but it must be worth all the confusion it causes. The intersection in the example didn't have any stop signs a decade ago. Then they added the stops signs but no separate yield right turn. Then the yield sign and turn lane was added a year or three later. The median makes it a bit visually clearer that right turn is supposed to yield, I think.
This example has NO median: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Benson+Rd+&+Ten-Ten+Rd,+North+Carolina+27529/@35.636184,-78.6137899,3a,75y,171.65h,109.32t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sXfT0Iigmq3y5MpPtHZL96w!2e0!7i16384!8i8192!4m5!3m4!1s0x89ac61806ffa38bd:0xd15edaa5b6f8dc10!8m2!3d35.6359259!4d-78.6135558
It also has traffic lights. So right turn only needs to yield on green light (both green and yellow left turn arrow) but not when the light is red. This one looks more confusing to me and I'm sure many drivers don't get it. Worth to note that the yield sign is often knocked down. Not sure if that is because confused right turn drivers ram into it trying to avoid collisions but I would not be surprised. Then the yield sign is gone for a few days adding to the confusion.
So I guess below is an example of the kind of intersection I'm talking about:
https://www.google.com/maps/@33.8148308,-83.7336343,3a,75y,238.36h,93.66t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1snpu1N1VwMC8oQ1P6VBT2Aw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192
(for max clarity)
I guess it's just confusing for me because I have to yield the right of way by slowing to a stop, checking behind me to see if the traffic will even permit the other guy to make his turn, waiting to see if the guy in the left lane is even going to take that turn, and then keep going.
Just seem like it would be so much simpler to have the left turner yield to the right turner.
But I guess I'm not a traffic engineer.
if it helps, imagine that instead of a yield sign it was a red light.
They've created this weird situation here where the merge between the left and right turning lanes is actually outside the intersection, so they're probably trying to slow right turning traffic whose vision will be turning away from the left turn lane. Dumb way to design an intersection.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
That intersection is actually a double intersection. So the second a green car has made his turn, and ends up on the second lane of traffic, you have to yield. Otherwise you could have the problem of green car (and the people behind him) stopping in the middle of the intersection where high speed traffic is blazing by (which is dangerous). Green car on the other hand has a necessity to yield to non-turning traffic, but once he has passed the main lane he then has priority in the second intersection.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
That's a pretty common situation here in Germany, too, but normally the striped part in front of green in your situation is built up part with a curb and blue often has a dedicated lane for turning left.
This is the opposite view from blue.
Blue has to make its turn rather quick because traffic on the main road is normally 30-45mph and can't really stop for slowly turning green blocking the other road as that would put blue in the way of ongoing traffic on the main road.