A Yellow Traffic Light Means Stop
Believe it or not, in British Columbia a yellow traffic light tells you that you must stop before you enter the intersection! Yes, I know that there is one caveat to that statement, and it is "unless the stop cannot be made in safety." The onus is on the driver that does not stop for the yellow light to show that it was unsafe if they are involved in court proceedings because of their decision.
Is anyone able to tell me what a stale green light is? That's right, it's a traffic signal that will soon be turning from green to yellow. An example of a stale green light would be one that you have not seen turn green so that you don't know how long it has been that way, one that has a solid red hand "don't walk" signal facing the same direction of travel or perhaps the cross street has many vehicles waiting for the red.
The proper response when approaching a stale green light is to shadow the brake pedal. This means lifting your foot off of the accelerator and hovering it over the the brake. If a stop is needed, you are already almost there as you are beginning to slow and ready to brake.
Couple this with advance warning lights of a signal change and awareness of surrounding traffic and road conditions and the only reason to not stop at a yellow light may be that the light changed when you were so close to the intersection that you had reached the point of no return.
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I usually agree with most of what you say, but I have a problem with this "shadowing" technique.
Back when I was a driving instructor, I built a "reaction time meter". Basically a stop light with red, amber, green, hooked up to a digital 1,000ths of a second timer, and push buttons for Start / Stop. I would set the light to green, and have the student press a dummy button. Under the table, I would change the light from green to amber or red, starting the timer, and the student would move his hand to and push another button to stop it. I graphed every student, and over time developed an almost perfect bell curve, from just under 1/2 sec to just over 1 sec.
The purpose was to teach students :
A vehicle moves about 1 foot per second per kph. So at 50 (or more likely 63) kph, a driver will take about 50 (or 63) feet to react to the light change, before mashing the pedal. If the driver "shadows" the pedal, he will stop 50 or so feet sooner than the car behind. Probably leading to a rear ender.Especially since many aggressive drivers automatically hit the gas first, expecting the driver ahead to "run the yellow".
I taught my students, that if they felt the green was really getting "stale", to cover the brake pedal, but also push just enough to activate the brake lights, thus warning the driver behind that they were preparing to stop if necessary. If the light stayed green, they would simply coast through.
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The whole concept of being able to predict a light change through the "stale green" concept is a real epiphany for most new drivers. And probably a lot of ‘experienced’ ones as well, it seems. Good of you to bring it up in your column.
The introduction of "dedicated" traffic lights also introduces an opportunity to predict an imminent color change.
If I am on a "dedicated" route, and see a car approach from a cross street, I know the light will change in ( from about) 8 to 15 seconds. If I am farther away than that, I can virtually be assured that it will change.
What are your thoughts on the proposal for more traffic circles or "roundabouts" ? Good or bad idea?
It's worth mentioning ...
... that a Yellow Arrow essentially means the same thing as a Solid Yellow Light.
Sure as hell doesn't mean boot it into your late left turn, just when the pedestrians are likely to enter your path on their fresh 'Walk' signal.
I'm just sayin' ...