Comment by kurthr | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kurthr | Hacker News Reader

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In California (I don't know Oregon) the law is that you can't enter an intersection under red. Unless you have countdown timers (or a good orthogonal view), you don't know when a light will turn red. The yellow, then, should be long enough for you to safely exit the intersection (under congestion laws you usually are not allowed to enter an intersection if there is not room for you to exit it) assuming the other direction turns green (very shortly) after red. An alternative safe solution would be to extend the time between red and opposing green (non-overlap) and keep yellows shorter.

Frankly, it's strange to me that even 0.12 sec was not enough, if the camera was only focused on the entry into the intersection. My guess is that it was shooting rear plates in the intersection, and catching turning cars (to maximize revenue)... Of course there are states where entering under a yellow is prohibited, but then we've legislated Pi to be 3 too.

Now, I have also seen Bostonians jump off the line before a light turned green and that would certainly have me stomping my brakes into a stale yellow, but I'm not sure it's safer.

"entering under a yellow is prohibited"

What dumbasses came up with that rule? Isn't the whole point of the yellow light to signal that it will turn red soon, and that people have to make a choice?

So if you drive up to a green light then you have to stop, wait for the red light and then drive when it turns green again to ensure that you're not running a yellow light.

Around here (Europe) the meaning of yellow is "stop and don't enter", almost equivalently to red. The only difference is that if at the moment the light turns red you are so close and so fast that you cannot stop safely, then you can continue. So you have to make a decision, but it's not really a "choice".

In practice yellow phases are too long and taken by many as a signal to speed up and speed through. I don't think police enforce the rules here, but this is clearly prohibited.

> if at the moment the light turns red you are so close and so fast that you cannot stop safely, then you can continue.

If you are still travelling fast at the lights when they turn red, you must have been ignoring the yellow light, so this makes no sense. The whole point of the yellow light is to ensure that you have time to stop before the lights go red, making running the red lights inexcusable.

Not that I've never run a red light, I'm no angel, but this argument is absurd.

I am fairly sure they meant "if at the moment the light turns yellow you are so close and so fast that you cannot stop safely"

That's how I learned it in Germany, anyway.

Argh, sorry, yes, that's what I meant. When the light turns yellow, you must stop unless it would be dangerous to brake that hard.

IME making a left turn on a yellow is more dangerous than waiting for the light to turn red and quickly making the turn, as long as you are already in the intersection. Turning on yellow means racing oncoming traffic trying to beat the light, while turning on red just means traffic has to wait a bit for you to clear the intersection.

This begs the question: why don't we have visible countdown timers? Now that I think about it, I use the adjacent crosswalk's counter timers to judge when to expect a yellow/red light when I can see them.

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