Safe Speed Forums

Why? Most lights have simultaneous green phases on opposing directions.

You must be misunderstanding what's happening.

Westbound traffic shown a green light
East bound traffic shown a green light

Westbound traffic ight goes red
Green light still showing to East bound traffic

I can see the problem with this setup.

It is very easy to simply think "well turning right you should give way to oncoming traffic regardless of wether there is traffic lights or not" however, I can see the problem here. A lot of drivers are conditioned to the idea of both directions being given the same traffic light signal at the same time (excepting filter arrows).

Imagine the situation were there is a gap in oncoming traffic and you are in the middle of the junction stopped behind another car just as the light has turned red. The gap is not sufficient to allow two cars to turn right safely if the oncoming vehicles have a green light. So the car in front turns right - what goes through your head?

car approaching slowing down - maybe he sees you edging or maybe its a red light?
Guy in front went - safe gap or maybe red light?
you are "stranded" in a junction where the left and right traffic may start moving and you want to clear the junction ASAP.
Every other 4 way junction you have seen in X years driving always gives opposing direction signals the same (or 3 stop one go)

I can see how a driver could go wrong in this situation.

I have just been hit because of one of these junctions.

Both sets of lights turn green at the same time.

One set (the set with the right turn!) turns red while the opposing direction (with no turn!) remains green.

I was turning right. My light turned red. I figured I was going to cause an obstruction to traffic coming out of the side road. A car coming from the opposite direct slowed right down so I moved forward, was almost across when I got hit by a woman doing 40mph. Not sure if I'm the one to blame here or not... but what a stupid set up. There is no warning that oncoming traffic will keep coming after the lights that you can see have turned red.

No, I understand perfectly, but you said someone going east expressed annoyance at you as they though you had run a red light going west. How could he know whether the westbound light had gone red or not?
My quoted comment above was referring to the fact that it is normal to go through a green light at a crossroads at the same time as traffic coming the other way, so I didn't understand his annoyance.

kates: where was the woman doing 40 coming from?

And

Thanks for the welcome!!

She was coming from the opposite direction. She had full view of the whole length of my car as she literally hit the back corner, passenger side. 1 second later and she would have collided with the bloke behind me who was also coming through. He verified the light was red. It doesn't look like she even attempted to slow down, my car did a full 360.

He couldn't, but I think the assumption is opposing lights go red at the same time.

I could by the way, I looked back and I could see the light for traffic coming at me was still green.

Sounds like she's somebody for whom a green light means "go go go!", and not "proceed with caution".

Normal design rules are that if the opposing flow is to get a green signal after your signal has gone to red, then you should not be able to see a secondary signal while waiting within the junction - this is to prevent precisely the situation presented in this thread. Yet people also complain (im sure there are comments on this very forum on this matter) about NOT having a secondary on the far side of the junction. Which do you want? You cant have both.

I presume there's a set of guidlines for how to "traffic light up" a junction?

I've seen junctions with green "straight on" arrows only that are lit at the same time the red light is lit, meaning you can go straight on, but not turn right.

Either that or the right turn has it's own set of lights.

It seems strange to me that opposing lights are out of sync.

Guidelines and regulations, yes. And the experience of the engineer designing or operating the site.

Having seen some of the monstrosities on the network, it is the latter that is sometimes lacking.

How about a croix de st andré? If they mean what I think they mean.

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Andrew.

St Andrews Cross?

I presume therfore you are referring to open level crossings? What has that got to do with the subject?

Oh, no, maybe that's not the one. I was thinking of the red cross used in France, put on the back of a set of lights so that oncoming vehicles can see that the other side has a red light. Or sometimes they have a hole in the back of the red light.

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Andrew.