It took us years to adopt right turn on red. Every moment you are not sitting at a red light idle you are saving gasoline. So right turn on red saves gas. Now it is time, a century late, to recognize that the proper role of a traffic light is to 1. specify who has the right of way, and 2. prevent accidents at intersections when one can not see around the intersection. Why not start using traffic lights in this logical way? Replace every red light in the country at an intersection where there is clear vision both left and right with a red light that turns solid red and then after five seconds begins flashing. Upon approaching a flashing red light you must come to a complete stop. If there is no traffic in either direction you are permitted to proceed through the intersection, or turn right or left, but you are not permitted to stop in the intersection and block green-light traffic. All intersections where there is not clear visibility would have non-flashing red lights, and you would be required to wait for the green light, as now. We depend on the judgment of drivers to decide whether it is safe to turn right on red. Why not depend on their judgment to decide whether it is safe, after stopping, to proceed through the intersection? This would: 1. save millions of gallons of gasoline each year. 2. Speed up traffic flow. 3. Stop the annoyance of sitting at an intersection wasting gas when there is not another car in sight for miles. 4. Make all the companies that manufacture traffic light circuitry very very happy. (The lights only have to be modified, they do not have to be replaced.) 5. Finally, after a century of using traffic lights incorrectly, recognize that the proper role of a traffic light is to specify who can proceed straight through an intersection and who must stop and look before proceeding, rather than who must stop and twiddle their thumbs. P.S. I have been proposing this for 30 years now and have not found one person who does not think it's lunacy. All of these people who think i'm a lunatic for proposing this are, of course, wrong.
Dah want to save gasoline and energy do away with the lights altogether we just need more roundabouts aka rotaries. They work great everywhere else in the world.
Let's be practical! You can not not easily, nor inexpensively, convert city intersections into roundabouts after the fact, though it's not a bad idea when new intersections are being planned, provided the real estate is available..
I just had a visual of when a power grid gets knocked out in Boston and all the lights turn in to flashing yellows or reds.... what a shitshow! Anyway, I like the idea in more suburban areas for sure!
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