Picture this: A driver passing through an urban neighborhood approaches an intersection, intending to turn right. The traffic light in front of him is red, but he’d prefer not to wait for it to turn green. Thanks to “right-on-red,” he doesn’t need to.
The driver inches into the crosswalk, watching the oncoming traffic to his left and waiting for a gap to appear. He finally spots one and accelerates into the turn, without realizing that a pedestrian on his right has just stepped off the curb, beckoned by a green “Walk” sign. Tragedy follows.
Right-on-red, the common term for policies allowing drivers to turn right when a traffic light is red, invites such scenarios. Cognitive overload is inevitable if drivers are expected to simultaneously watch traffic to their left and keep an eye out for anyone biking or walking to their right. The policy harms even those pedestrians and cyclists who avoid being struck, forcing them to maneuver around cars that have edged into crosswalks.
The good news is that U.S. cities are starting to recognize these downsides, which are particularly troubling at a time when pedestrian and cyclist deaths have hit their highest levels in 40 years. Several local governments have recently adopted no-turn-on-red policies, and others are considering doing the same. This trend should be encouraged. Right-on-red is an ill-conceived traffic rule that needs to die.
As with so many factors contributing to the crisis in American roadway safety, blame for right-on-red falls largely on the federal government. Until 50 years ago, only a handful of Western states permitted drivers to turn at a red light. But the 1970s oil crisis prompted the federal government to insist that states change their traffic laws, hoping that right-on-red would reduce gas consumed while cars idle at traffic lights. In 1975, the feds demanded that states default to right-on-red or forfeit energy funding; by 1980, the last holdout, Massachusetts, had complied. (That federal rule is still on the books, by the way.)
It’s unclear that right-on-red did much of anything to reduce gas consumption, but it had a sizable effect on roadway safety. A 1982 study found that the new policy triggered a sharp increase in crashes involving conflicts between a pedestrian or cyclist and a right-turning vehicle. In Ohio, for instance, such collisions rose 57% for pedestrians and 80% for cyclists; in Wisconsin, the figures were 107% and 72%, respectively.
A recent academic study helps to explain why right-on-red is so problematic. The authors examined people’s behavior behind the wheel, concluding that “at red-light turns, driver attention was heavily skewed toward leftward traffic.” In other words, drivers were focused on the flow of cars that they sought to merge into, rather than anyone biking or walking to their right. The dangers of that orientation are obvious, especially since a “Walk” sign could be inviting pedestrians and cyclists to cross in front of the turning car.
Making matters worse, drivers pausing at red lights often block crosswalks as they move forward to get a better view before turning. “The physics of right-on-red requires the driver to at some point be in the crosswalk,” said Bill Schultheiss, director of design at urban-planning consultancy Toole Design. “That means you’ve denied the right-of-way to somebody walking or biking because a driver is blocking their path.”
By now, many drivers have grown accustomed to turning right at red lights, even though the gas shortage—the original justification for allowing such turns—ended decades ago.
Although it’s hard to say how many vehicle crashes involving pedestrians and/or cyclists are caused by right-on-red conflicts, Toronto officials have estimated that historically they have accounted for some 2% of pedestrian deaths and 4% of cyclist deaths in that city. Applying those percentages to U.S. crash deaths would suggest around 190 annual fatalities nationwide.
Across the Atlantic, European countries have charted a different course, making right-on-red the exception rather than the rule. Within the European Union such turns are illegal by default and are allowed only at specified intersections. (Forty years ago communist East Germany attracted eye rolls for allowing right-on-red; West Germans scoffed at the “socialist right turn.”)
But right-on-red remains the norm across both Canada and the U.S. Apart from New York City and Montreal, which have long banned the practice, cities have permitted right-on-red at any intersection unless it’s affixed with a “No Turn on Red” sign. That inconsistency has sown uncertainty among drivers as well as pedestrians and cyclists, since the traffic rules can change block to block.
Now a growing number of city leaders are questioning that approach, with some seeking to nix right-on-red entirely.
“It’s simpler to have a general rule against right-on-red,” said Burhan Azeem, a city councilor in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who helped lead the city’s move to ban such turns last November. Azeem said he’d grown increasingly concerned about right-on-red due to the growing number of SUVs and trucks on local streets. “I think that larger cars have less visibility for bicyclists, and for pedestrians as well,” he said. Schultheiss agreed: “For these large trucks and SUVs, the driver will have a huge blind spot at intersections. It’s easy for them to miss children, people in wheelchairs—even people [who are] 5-foot-4.”
Azeem and his colleagues in Cambridge aren’t alone in dumping right-on-red. Last fall, the District of Columbia’s city council voted to end it, and this spring, Ann Arbor, Michigan, banned it throughout its downtown. Last month, Seattle adopted a citywide ban on right-on-red, and a recently introduced bill would curtail it across Washington state.
Still, drivers have grown used to their right-on-red privileges, and some will resent losing them—even though a recent study published by the Institute of Transportation Engineers found that a no-turn-on-red pilot created substantial safety benefits and only “minor impacts to traffic operations.” Opposition can be particularly problematic in red states whose legislatures habitually preempt Democratic cities from implementing their own policies. In Indianapolis, for instance, local officials have moved to end right-on-red throughout much of the city, but a Republican state legislator recently introduced a bill that would prevent Indianapolis—and only Indianapolis—from regulating such turns.
Since the federal government created much of the current mess with right-on-red, it would be sensible for Congress and the U.S. Department of Transportation to help clean it up. For example, USDOT could link the elimination of right-on-red to competitive transportation grants issued to cities and states. But past experience suggests that Republicans in Congress will fiercely resist such a move (see their meltdown over anodyne DOT guidance that states consider repairing existing highways before building new ones).
For the moment, the most viable path for dropping right-on-red goes through cities that control their own traffic rules. With urban leaders nationwide struggling to fulfill their Vision Zero pledges to eliminate crash deaths, banning right-on-red is a specific and tangible way to make walking and biking both safer and less stressful.
It’s a move that should have been taken decades ago, when the end of the oil crisis negated the right-on-red’s supposed rationale. Better late than never.
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