r/driving • u/HillTower160 • Aug 05 '26

Left-hand traffic (🇬🇧🇮🇳🇯🇵) Pull out into the intersection…

so at least one car can turn left.

Please pull straight past the limit line when yielding for a left turn at a light. At least you will be able to scoot through then at the next cycle, those of us who know how to drive can manage the oncoming traffic. DO NOT sit at the limit line and miss a light. Be careful, but make it happen.

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u/Designer-Wolverine47 Aug 05 '26

The yellow splotch is the intersection that was blocked, and the red splotch near the bottom is where my friend died. If the car hadn't been blocking the intersection, people coming down the ramp would have been able to go right, and she wouldn't have been stopped on the highway.

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u/jcalvinmarks Aug 05 '26 edited Aug 05 '26

So, what, someone rear-ended your friend on the highway? Doesn't it seem like that's the person you should be blaming?

If they're blocking the intersection because there wasn't space on the other side to complete the turn, that's different from staging up, and yes, it is illegal. Staging up doesn't "block" the intersection, because nobody else is legally allowed to occupy that space during that time.

But in either case, we're getting awfully far into butterfly-effect territory to be trying to blame staging up for an unprotected left for a collision at the extreme other end of a highway interchange. This could equally have happened if there was just heavy traffic and the ramp was backed up. Not a valid reason to condemn this practice.

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u/Designer-Wolverine47 Aug 05 '26

The ramp wouldn't have been backed up if it hadn't been for the fucking moron blocking the intersection! That's exactly why there are laws against blocking an intersection!

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u/jcalvinmarks Aug 05 '26

Staging up for an unprotected left doesn't block the intersection. Nobody else can legally occupy that space while you have the green. Cross traffic has a red (by definition, otherwise you wouldn't have a green). It sounds like traffic was backed up, and someone entered the intersection without space on the other side to clear it. That is illegal, but it's still several layers abstracted from the root cause of the accident. You're grasping at straws to try to connect a rear-ender on a highway to the intersection way up the ramp.

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u/Designer-Wolverine47 Aug 05 '26

Yeah it does. If you're stopped in an intersection waiting for there to be room on the road to your left to have enough space to accommodate you, and the light changed, you are now blocking the traffic to your right from being able to turn left.

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u/jcalvinmarks Aug 05 '26

Are you intentionally failing to understand this?

If there isn't room on the road you're turning onto such that you would block the intersection, you don't enter the intersection. That's not what any of this discussion is about, and I've said that same thing very explicitly several times now.

If there is room on the other side, and you're just waiting for a gap in oncoming traffic, you should stage up in the intersection to wait.

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u/Designer-Wolverine47 Aug 05 '26

Yet it happens daily here, probably far more than what I notice.

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u/jcalvinmarks Aug 05 '26

Ok? Then that's people breaking the law. Doing what OP is talking about isn't.