Q: I was recently told by a friend that the proper way to make a left hand turn at a stop light was to proceed into the intersection when the light turns green, then wait until oncoming traffic has cleared and make your left turn, even if the light has turned red. (He kept saying “Read your Driver Manual” but I could not find the answer.) I was taught to wait until you are certain you will be able to turn left before it turns red. Have I been doing it wrong all these years?
A: If your friend took his own advice (to read the driver guide), he might be inclined to retract his statement. I’ve checked with reliable sources, including the Revised Code of Washington, the Washington Driver Guide, driving instructors, and police officers. None of them support your friend’s position. If you squint, you could conclude that it might not be illegal, but that’s certainly not the same as “the proper way.”
Let’s work through the above sources, starting with two sections in the law. First, the law says that no driver shall enter an intersection unless there is sufficient space on the other side to accommodate the vehicle they are driving. You might read that and conclude that it’s talking about traffic jams; prohibiting pulling into the intersection when the road straight ahead is blocked. We can agree that it clearly applies there, but I (and some police officers I’ve spoken with) believe that it applies whether the “other side” of the intersection is straight ahead or to the left or right.
In the section on traffic signals, the law says that drivers facing a green signal who want to turn “shall stop to allow other vehicles within the intersection control area to complete their movements.” You might argue that it doesn’t specify that drivers must stop at the stop line, but I think it’s implied. Why? The same law also requires drivers to stop for pedestrians, and that clearly means stopping before entering the intersection.
But don’t just trust my take on this. The Washington Driver Guide concludes that the law means “Drivers must not enter an intersection unless they can get through it without having to stop.” And the professionals who train our children to drive teach their driving students only to pull into the intersection to make a left turn if there is a clear path all the way through the intersection. Otherwise, students are directed to wait at the stop line until the road is clear to make a left turn.
I’m not the final authority on how to interpret the law. Actually, I have no authority there. I’ll leave that to the judges. But as a traffic safety nerd, I’ll say that even if you conclude that the law doesn’t prohibit it, that doesn’t make it a good choice. About a quarter of all traffic fatalities occur at intersections. Think about how many miles you drive, and how little of that driving is going through intersections. Even if you only drive in the city, most of the time you’re not in an intersection. But intersections have lots of crashes because they have lots of points of conflict. If you’re stopped in the middle of an intersection waiting for a gap to make your turn, you’ve set yourself up for all those points of conflict, all at once.
When there’s literally tons of steel rolling through the intersection the smart (and proper) approach, regardless of how you interpret the law, is waiting for a clear path before entering the intersection.
Ignoring the legalities, it is better to wait to enter because when there is a clearing of traffic you’ll be moving before you have to turn your wheels left. Since you will have already accelerated before turning left that means you’ll clear the road faster and be able to turn on smaller gaps in traffic (and be less likely to be hit by on-coming traffic if you misjudge).
Hello, I am a former driving instructor and we all do not teach the student driver to wait behind the line until you have a gap. Many of us teach them to “meet their gap” as at many intersections if you don’t time it right, you will never get to make your left if you wait behind the line. We didn’t allow them to stop in the intersection, as that is illegal but once they see their gap in oncoming traffic we instructed them to start rolling so they could “thread the needle” if you will and meet their gap in the middle of the intersection.
You’re right, and I could have been more clear about that. That’s what I intended to communicate when I wrote that drivers should only “pull into the intersection to make a left turn if there is a clear path all the way through the intersection.” Thanks for your insight, and thanks for teaching the next generation of drivers how to do it safely.