
After a tragic spate of pedestrian and cyclist fatalities, Mayor Muriel Bowser recently proposed increasing the number of downtown intersections where no turns on red would be prohibited (among other changes). While welcomed, the announcement was generally received tepidly from safety advocates that demand even more aggressive steps to address unsafe driver behavior. And while the city hasn’t announced where all the new “no turn on red” will go, it was reported that they will be in the central business district, which does not include Georgetown.
But should it?
Allowing turns on red lights was a policy that became popular in the 1970s. It was dressed up as a step to address the energy crisis, under the reasoning that cars will end up idling less and therefore use less gasoline. But there’s not a whole lot of studies that support that argument. And in the mean time it has simply become a right that impatient drivers feel entitled to. (Consider the differing treatment that jaywalking and right-on-red gets. The former is condemned as unsafe, and often used to blame the victim in traffic fatality. The latter is allowed and rarely punished, even when misused. Yet in both cases it is simply a question of a road user surveying the situation and deciding that notwithstanding the default, it is ok to proceed.) Continue reading →
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