In my experience the turn lane doesn’t have a hard cutoff like that, you can usually ride the shoulder a bit to get around people if needed
So your one of those drivers, huh?
And some people make it a sport here! Zooming by on the shoulder. For…waaay too long.
Dodging pedestrians?
Where exactly are those cars heading? There’s no road forward and only one lane to the right.
That lawn on the right won’t plow itself, amirite?
Canada, in a single image? I’ve driven cars in most European countries, Canada, US (small amount), Mexico.
Canada has the worst road designs of them all, though since almost everything here is modelled after the US, I guess it could still be worse there
I regularly see road situations where I can only wonder how high they were, what they were smoking, and where I can get some
Intersections where only one lane has traffic lights, the other doesn’t. How are you supposed to cross that? Simple: you throw a hail Mary, close your eyes, andale a run for it while praying to some non-exist God. This is howy stepson got sideswiped, by a guy having to do exactly that.
Making a left turn in Canada? Great, you got green! Go? Well no, cars are still coming from the other side, they inexplicably got green too so now the intersection with traffic lights also acts as an intersection without traffic lights. Amazing designs!
But wait, there is more!
Once those cars from the other side are gone, you might be tempted to think that you can now just drive, but noooooooh, this is Canada! Pedestrians also got green so now you need to try and avoid those too if you can. The amount of near misses that I’ve had and that I’ve seen with others is staggering, crossing roads in Canada is fucking dangerous.
All this adds up to that going left basically means that you get green light and you can’t do shit until it gets orange, then you quickly squeeze yourself through and pray that you didn’t murder a school class by accident.
This, in turn, means that going to the left is an exercise in patience, because each green red cycle, about one car will be able to go to the left. If each cycle takes a minute, and you have ten cars in front of you, that means you’ll have to wait ten minutes I shit you not.
Compare that to the Netherlands, where intersections get redesigned and rebuilt every time when anyone sees there are tooany accidents, and there are soany amazing traffic flow control designs there. Here in canada, traffic flow designs is “road, done”
I love Canada, I feel proudly Canadian, but Canadian road designs are removed as fuck.
The thing that you have to keep in mind is that Canadian roads (and, presumably, American roads, too) were designed for a very different transportation culture than the one that exists today. In many cases, they were built for horses and carriages, and retrofitted to motor vehicles that grew up in a much less populated country. No, they didn’t work well in the 50s, either, but the density of cars was low enough, and the kinds of people who drove were different enough, that it kinda sorta worked. But as the populations have grown, and as the culture has become more high strung, and driving has become a necessity for many people (and as vehicles have gotten larger, taller, and more fortress-like), navigating the streets has gotten riskier for all involved.
And no, it won’t get fixed, because North Americans hate change, and we would rather give a small number of millionaires and billionaires tax cuts than actually spend money on social infrastructure in any kind of meaningful or thought out way.
When you do the math on how much it costs both a private citizen along with the public to enable cars as transportation it’s mind boggling.
The province I live in makes around $90-100B / year in tax revenue, and spends around $4.5-5.5B / year on roads and road maintenance.
There’s also the hidden cost of road work caused by utilities being replaced, struck, or newly installed. We pay thx bill for that through our telecom, power, sewer .etc
Insurance, gas, car payments…
If a road is built to last 10 years then technically on average you’re replacing ⅒ of your roads every year. Utilities are the same and trenching/patching is horrible for roads necessitating rework on them earlier than the life expectancy. A fiber line might have a 40 year life span, but installing it turned a 20 year road into a 10 year replacement.
Oh, it’s worse in the US, but it also varies wildly by State. Boston roads are defined by the most negative possible combination of local knowledge, horse buggy trails, and fuck you. New York? Turn lanes can fuck right off, let’s make sure one car can block an entire lane of cars trying to pass by. Also, let’s cram as many secondary roads into one short highway as possible that is the only way to go a certain direction so that it’s at a near standstill for 15 hours a day. Make sure it’s under construction for every 9 out of 10 years. Oh, and that’ll be $8 toll for the luxury of the experience. Texas? Make each direction on a highway 6 lanes wide with everything from scrapyard clunkers and 10 foot tall brodozers going 80 mph, and they‘ll shoot you if you say anything. Midwest? Hope you have good suspension to cope with all the potholes and missing chunks of bridges. California? 14 lanes wide and at a dead stop in traffic.
Is that right-angle traffic light a common thing? I’ve never seen one like that before.
Inaccurate. It’s two cars with 1.5 car lengths in front of each.
You’re right, this is worse.
So close. The first car is too close to the line.
I drive to patients homes all day and I daily see people in the suburbs stop far enough back that they don’t always trip the left turn arrow, sometimes leaving that lane stuck an extra cycle. It would be infuriating, except that my drive time is paid and mileage reimbursed, so I’ve chosen not to let it bother me. I just roll my eyes and wait.
Generally when approaching a intersection on a red light you should stop the car so that you see the white line at the top of your hood. This allows you to also see the painted crosswalk and any pedestrians in the crosswalk (no matter their height) when sitting in your car.
If it’s a two lane or more roadway it also has the added benefit of letting the driver to your right see pedestrians more clearly if they are making a right turn.
The person to your right can pull up to and have their front wheels touch the line, while having a full unobstructed view of the intersection to the left, it also allows a pedestrian crossing to see the car in the far right line as they approach the end of the intersection.
At least here in Austria we often have left turning lanes, that have a magnetic sensor/loop in the street and the traffic light only switches, when you’re on top off it.
People stopping way too early and especially people leaving too much space between cars is really infuriating in the city…Those sensors are the apex of Modernist arrogance, where people just decide they know every detail about any system they look at and can control everything.
There is no single place where they work. But at least people have been steadily removing them for the last 30 years.
I’m not really sure, if I understood you
In streets with high traffic, the left turning red light only goes to green, if someone is actually there waiting. Because else it would make a longer red phase for the opposite drivers going straight
So, it seems like an improvement to me
What am I missing?
What am I missing?
Every traffic situation where people would need to cross but there won’t be a car stopper exactly over the sensor.
Not exhaustively:
-
pedestrians
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motorcycles
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bicycles
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cars stopped at the wrong place
-
Man, I could have saved like ten, or even fifteen seconds if the infrastructure was bigger.
Fantastic! You have a source?
Just look around.
I’m missing something? I was hoping for a link to the artist’s site
I think it was a joke: reality. The source is reality (around us).
Check for cops.
Hop that fuckin curb.
Yea destroying the infrastructure we all share and need in order to save 10 seconds is super cool.
Our society doesn’t give a fuck about me. I don’t give a fuck about it.
Fix the infrastructure
I’m not qualified for street construction.
Am I the only one deeply irritated that the left going lane has no arrows and no one is indicating left either?
This intersection really hurts my sense of order!Some people don’t indicate when the lane they’re in can be used only to go one way. It’s not necessarily the best course of action, but you just sorta learn to deal with it
My headcanon is that the right turning person’s blinker is the only one out of sync
Thanks, that idea has a certain beauty to it.
I will now adopt it and move closer to inner peace again!
They’re all BMWs…
has no arrows
How do you know? They’d all be obscured by the cars.
Should be visible on the first panel, unless painted totally randomly out of sync to the right-pointing arrows.
But that would also trigger my sense of order, soooo… :-)
It’s a left-only lane, why would you have a blinker on?
Because your indicator signals unambiguous intent to any observer who does not possess the same universal mental database of every intersection in the world that you must possess.
Why would it be a left-only lane?
There are no arrows on the lane…And even if it was, you still have to indicate your desired direction, as the direction of the lane might not be clear to all traffic participants.
Because going forward would lead you into the railing and grass. You can literally only make a left or illegal right.
You’re the reason we have to add “coffee is hot” warnings on take away cups, mate.
You can literally only make a left or illegal right.
Why would turning right be illegal?
As far as we can see, it is a lane with no mandatory direction (which is the thing that has been bugging me in the first place).But, TBF, I believed that myself for a long time, only to have the called police give me a little crash course in traffic lane rules after I had a car crash in a somewhat similar situation…
I don’t think you have to indicate left when it’s the only possible direction you can go
You do, because the other drivers cannot be expected to track whether that’s your only possibility.
I don’t think you have to indicate left when it’s the only possible direction you can go
But with no arrows on the ground, you could also go to the right.
Had to learn that the hard way some years ago, when a car standing on a arrow-less lane, unexpected by me, also turned left together with myself standing on the left-arrow-lane.
We then had a crash while merging lanes, and it was determined to be my fault entirely.So the comic also triggers a bit of PTSD for me… ;-)
Sounds like a fucked up intersection if two lanes merge into one during the turn. Usually they will be two lanes with a solid white to indicated not to switch lanes.
This is precisely why you always indicate. In the absolute worst case scenario, it’s redundant information. But it also indicates unambiguous intent even when the traffic pattern is confusing or unfamiliar.
You also need to indicate even when you think you are alone. Again, worst case scenario, nobody sees it. But on the off chance that your awareness is not perfect, it indicates unambiguous intent to anyone - including pedestrians - you might have not noticed.
Yes, it is a fucked up intersection, although the two lanes don’t merge into one.
But what you don’t realize there (because of coming out of a slight ditch) is that the target road on the left you are going to, actually has two parallel lanes.
Didn’t expect that at all, and the hinted broken lines on the ground are practically useless, as they have to connect 8 arriving lanes to all their possible counterparts in a chaotic way on a curved surface.
So I just headed to the right side of the left road (not realizing I thereby did a implicit change of lanes), while the car to my right was totally unexpectedly overtaking me from behind, starting from the unmarked lane I didn’t suspect to also optionally lead to the left…
Really fucked up situation for anyone not being local and accustomed to it.
Maybe the arrows are covered by the cars.
Maybe the arrows are covered by the cars.
Not in the first panel.
If there were arrows, they should be visible in parallel to the arrows going to the right.
Prime candidate for a roundabout conversion.
Prime candidate for a bus
the nightmares of being European raised and trying to drive in Sarasota Florida’s roundabout system
The problem with roundabouts in the States is that a large percentage of drivers were never taught how to navigate a roundabout we were just given them with an implied “you’ll figure it out.”
I’m curious, what’s up with their roundabouts? Did a little searching on the web but only found some complaints about bad drivers.
people stopping on the r’bout, or trearing the entrance like a stop sign when theres no traffic, there being concrete dividers between lanes on some, some reduce the number of lanes from 2 to 1 halfway around them
Even more annoying is when the green car leaves 2+ car lengths in front of it so the car behind can’t get into the turn lane if they need to.
This is just one more instance where riding a motorcycle is nice. See also, parking.
Or walking, or cycling, or taking a train.
My bicycle is my most used form of transportation. I bike around 5K miles per year, more than I drive. If If it’s too far, my next choice is my motorcycle. If it’s really far, there is inclement weather, or I need to haul a significant amount of stuff, it’s my car.
Contrary example: all the dipshit drivers on the road and nothing between you and their vehicle.
The risk of becoming a meat crayon on the pavement is very real, but fortunately for me childhood trauma has given me an enormous appetite for risk and I feel most alive sitting atop an engine with wheels hurling down the highway with the risk of death or dismemberment lurking in my subconscious.
Yeah, but they are fat and slow and very obviously out to get you. You’re quick and nimble, just stay the fuck away from all the other idiots.
Works on a motorcycle too.
There are two intersections like the right panel (but for left turns) on my route home from work and they are perpetually red (heavy traffic) on my navigation.
Why… Why do you need navigation to get home from work on the route that I presume you take every day?
Construction and traffic.
Some locales completely mismanage lane closure schedules, and for some reason 90% of people forget how driving works the moment the road is slightly moist.
I live in a big city that has unpredictable traffic and construction everyday, where a 5 minute difference in departure time can exponentially increase your travel time. I have at least 3 primary routes to get home, and navigation helps me pick the best route at the time I leave. It will also suggest detours if it finds a faster way enroute.
My spouse does the same (and I would also do, but I am a diehard bicyclist…).
The city’s unpredictable road repair schedules and other unforeseen circumstances (e.g. we recently were led around a huge area because they were defusing another bomb), makes always activating navigation the sensible choice.
