There's a saying that we all pick and choose which laws to abide and which laws to break. For example I rarely travel at the speed limit and if the other three roads are patently free of traffic, I'll coast through a 4-way stop. This means that (a)I'm honest and (b)I'm like 90% of other drivers even if they claim they never break any laws. When I choose not to abide by traffic laws, I try to ensure it only affects me. Speed isn't killing me or slaughtering the women, children and babies of every driver near me (like everyone nowadays seems to think it will). Rolling through 4-way stops that are completely empty isn't inconveniencing anyone and it helps with fuel economy.
Changing lanes in intersections, however is one thing I won't do because it's a huge inconvenience to everyone else and it's a fantastic conflict point that can cause all manner of problems.
For the most part, people seem to understand that you don't change lanes when going straight through (for the most part) but it seems barely anyone understands that the same is true for when turning corners. For example when you turn out of a side street on to a main road, you should turn into the inside lane. Not swing across into the outside lane, because that's where people will tend to be driving who will be assuming (mostly wrongly) that you're going to use the inside lane.
The same is true for turning across large intersections. This diagram shows where the cars should go (in green) and where they seem to go all the time (in red):
Please, people - don't change lanes in intersections. By all means find some other motoring law to break that doesn't affect anyone. Might I suggest crossing double yellow lines on long, straight mountain roads when the person in front is doing 30 below the speed limit? If there's nothing coming towards you, it's perfectly safe to do this. The bigger problem in this situation is who the hell decided double yellow lines were needed in the first place.
7 comments:
In California, you are allowed to change lanes when turning from a single lane left into a double lane. that is a fact. No accident will occur if people come to a complete stop at red lights.
read this to learn more about turns and lane changing, it diagrams exactly what I said.
https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/pubs/hdbk/turns
In most places, when left turning at a one-to-two intersection, you're supposed to go into the lane closest to you - the green arrow on my diagram. California is definitely interesting if they legally allow you to swap lanes mid-intersection.
Utah for example : http://dld.utah.gov/wp-content/uploads/sites/17/2015/01/Driver-Handbook-2014.pdf
Page 13 item 6 - when left turning, do NOT turn from or enter into the right lane.
In Texas you can go into whatever lane you like. Coming from NZ it annoys the crap out of me when people don't turn in to the lane that closest to them.
Oh, and I still think you're back to front on the inside/outside lane definition... but, once again, we'll have to agree to disagree.
Well this explains it. Outside lane is the lane closest to oncoming traffic (in the rest of the world) and the lane furthest from oncoming traffic in the US. Go figure.
Lane definitions
Nope, look it up. A little research seems to have it split about 50/50. I guess it's tomartoes/tomaytoes.
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