For Safety’s Sake, DC Says No More Right Turns at Red Lights

• The Safer Streets Amendment Act of 2022, passed by the District of Columbia’s council in early October, is part of the Vision Zero initiative to eliminate traffic fatalities.
• D.C. has suffered an uptick in traffic fatalities and injuries recently. Three cyclists were killed in accidents with motor vehicles in July alone, Washingtonianmagazine reports.
• Right turns on red are considered dangerous to pedestrians because drivers are watching traffic coming from the left before making a turn, as walkers get the signal to proceed and step off the curb.

Washington, D.C., will eliminate right turns at red traffic lights in “virtually all cases” beginning in 2025 in what could become a nationwide reversal of laws enacted across the country in the late 1970s.

The Safer Streets Amendment Act of 2022, passed by the District of Columbia’s council in early October, is in a broader bundle of safety initiatives that is “part of a toolkit for the Vision Zero initiative,” says Colin Brooke, communications director for the Washington Area Bicyclists Association. On October 5, the same day the D.C. council approved the measure, the Ann Arbor, Michigan, city council banned right turns on red at 50 downtown intersections, according to MLive.

Eliminating right turns on red is more about pedestrians, Brooke says, while that broader bundle also includes partial adaptation of the so-called Idaho Stop for cyclists and electric scooter riders.

Vision Zero, initiated in Sweden (naturally) in the 1990s, is “a strategy to eliminate all traffic fatalities and severe injuries, while increasing safe, healthy, equitable mobility for all,” according to the Vision Zero Network website..

The Safer Streets Amendment was introduced by Mary Cheh, chair of the D.C. Council’s Committee on Transportation and the Environment. Her committee’s bill to increase registration fees for vehicles over 6000 pounds to $500 annually passed earlier this year.

While D.C. has embraced Vision Zero for years, it has suffered an uptick in traffic fatalities and injuries recently. Three cyclists were killed in accidents with motor vehicles in July alone, Washingtonian magazine reports.

The U.S. highway death rate spiked 10.5 percent to 42,915 in 2021, according to preliminary National Highway Traffic Safety Administration numbers. That’s up from 32,367 in 2011, and much of the increase comes from motor vehicles striking pedestrians and cyclists.

The Idaho Stop was established in 1982, when the state enacted laws allowing cyclists to treat stop signs as yield signs and to proceed through red lights, according to Bicycle Universe.

Ten more states have adopted the Idaho Stop, though some, like D.C., do not allow the traffic rule’s full Monty (in some cases, cyclists may proceed through a red light when the stoplight system does not recognize the bike in the intersection).

Because of the “hub and spoke” street design Pierre Charles L’Enfant drew up for the District of Columbia in the late 18^th century, many streets meet intersections at acute angles rather than at 90 degrees, so bicycles and scooters will be allowed to roll through stop signs but must stop for red lights, WABA’s Browne says.

The urban movement to add bike lanes and provide more deference in traffic to bicycles has added to the rift between motorists who believe too much space on urban and suburban streets has been given up for such sparsely used lanes, while cycling advocates counter that the reason bike lanes are often empty is because cars and trucks still are given priority on public roads.

Right turns on red are considered dangerous to pedestrians because drivers are watching traffic coming from the left before making the turn, as people step off the curb, often when pedestrians get the signal to proceed while the light remains red.

Councilwoman Cheh’s bill does not guarantee all rights on red in Washington will be gone after 2025, as it gives the District’s Transportation department authority to evaluate intersections where it might still be safer to retain right turns on red.

“In negotiating the bill, the agency told us that it would be likely there would be [such] locations,” Cheh says. “However, I am not aware of any specific intersections.”

Those of us old enough remember when the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975 prompted U.S. states and D.C. to adopt traffic laws allowing right turns at red lights. They already were legal in western states, according to Wikipedia, and Massachusetts was last to the party, in 1980. They have been “severely restricted” in New York City but most prevalent on Staten Island with its relatively low traffic and pedestrian volumes, according to nyc.gov.

“As the fuel savings argument for allowing right on red becomes less and less relevant with more efficient cars, hybrids, and EVs, and while traffic violence continues to rise across the country, I would imagine other jurisdictions will make the same common-sense decision we did in the District,” Cheh says. [“More efficient cars” includes the proliferation of mild-hybrid stop/start systems.]

If this is the beginning of a reverse wave, it probably will be the result of a widespread movement begun years ago to de-car congested urban areas in favor of walkable city streets. A reverse wave would happen without the push from something like the Energy Policy and Conservation Act, as “Individual traffic regulations are under the purview of local jurisdictions,” according to the Federal Highway Administration.

The upshot? Any wave of such bans will start in congested cities, not in states.

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