It's 4/10/14... Before any political enthusiasm can be built over this, self-driving cars will take command of personal transport in Western Civ, and left-hand turns (with a barrel-role and a loop-de-loop) will be mundane for housewives taking the kids to soccer... The 'licensed operator' will be (safely) giving full attention to her/his Android Communications Unit anyway.

An overly simplistic solution to something that's mostly only a problem in high-density urban areas. The problem is, it doesn't eliminate the need to go someplace that's on the left. So what the hapless driver has to do is go down to another intersection, make a U-turn, come back the other way, and then turn. What if there's a lot of cars wanting to go left? Now you've got a line of cars trying to make U-turns and blocking through traffic. And I'll hazard a guess that U-turns aren't any safer than left turns, and perhaps less so. New Orleans tried this very thing in the '80s in its business district. It created mass confusion, slowed down travel, and resulted in more idling time which of course means more gas burned. Plus the need to have to put in special U-turn intersections and signalling on top of the regular intersections.

I'll have to go dig up the numbers, but the city I live in has done a lot of work at intersections to offset the left turn lanes such that left-turning drivers have better visibility of oncoming traffic. They claim that this greatly reduces left-turn crashes. Admittedly this is probably not an option for high-density urban areas since it requires widening the intersections.

I never make left turns without a light if I can help it. I'd much rather just make a right and then U-turn at the next intersection, or plot my route ahead of time in a way that makes all right turns.

For me, though, it has nothing to do with safety and everything to do with taking the stress out of driving to the maximum extent possible.

San Francisco disallows left turns along most of its major streets. It's unique in that you can't get from the bottom to the top without driving on city streets. And they are "true" city streets, with residential driveways and such. It's a way of life to make three right turns to get across these roads. It's not a big deal at all, and traffic is much better than you'd expect to see, given the conditions.

(I don't understand discussing U-turns as an alternative. U-turns are just as bad or worse than left-turns, in my un-researched opinion.)

UPS led the way in this research in the early 2000s.
http://compass.ups.com/UPS-driver-avoid-left-turns/

plot my route ahead of time in a way that makes all right turns.

This is what I do. Mainly because people drive like they're drunk, asleep, texting, and/or the only person in the world, which impacts my ability to turn left in a timely way (before three lights change).

If you live in the city or if you drive in the city, three rights equal one left excepting all the one-way streets. For the rest of us, this is a solution looking for a problem.

This reminds me of that episode of Seinfeld in which George claims he can get anywhere in New York City without having to make a single left turn. If you try to turn left in New York City, you're definitely putting your life in danger.

flbeachmom, question: Does SF have a lot of one-way streets? Because it seems to me that if you were trying to make a sequence of right turns, one-way strets would drive you insane. You make a right, planning to make another right at the next block, but it's one way. So you go down another block, make a right, but at the next street where you need to turn it's one way again, etc.

SF resident here. It helps that SF is mostly a grid, so making three rights will = a left. The no left turn advice can be useless in suburban settings because making a right will just put you into a convoluted loop.

There are many one way streets, but once you know the roads you can easily compensate. Also, you can from a one way street make a left turn from far left lane and it's like a right turn.

There are a few roads which are no left turn only during heavy commute hours, I wish they were no left 24/7 because traffic would flow better. Just my $0.02.

I certainly have always considered left turns far more dangerous than right turns. Five times seems about right, or perhaps a bit low. On heavy traffic roads, I try to turn left only if there is a control light.

OTOH, even here in New England it is not unusual to drive miles without seeing such a light - or any traffic to speak of, so fairly safe to turn. Thinking back over fifty-odd years of driving, four of my five accidents were when I was trying to follow the road to the right but lost it on glare ice or wet leaves. The other involved a traffic light that malfunctioned - green in all directions.

or, you know, have people get more qualified to drive... and then they get in trouble if they mess up.

If you really want safety, take away everybody's ability to drive, or go where they wish to go, when. Bicycles are certainly too dangerous.

Oh, and make sure they present their "papers" on government demand.

Traffic strategies always generate discussion. Personally always want to be 1st in line turning left, even when I end up waiting. And waiting. I just don't wanna die turning left onto Beverly Glen from Olympic. So there.

Here in Japan, I try to avoid right turns, but the roads are narrow enough that even a left turn is sometimes problematic.

No right turn on red here which helps, but I watch Japanese drivers blow on through stop signs often enough that I drive very carefully.

The drivers who pizz me off want to turn left at a clearly-posted NO LEFT TURN intersection; others stop to turn left from the through-lane, instead of moving into the correct left turn lane; or, they block normal turn traffic so they can pull into the quickie mart driveway, making everyone behind them wait for a clearing-- and the next light change.

There's a road here that is notorious for not having a left-turn lane. It carries a lot of traffic becuase it leads to an entrance to the military base here, but it also runs through a high-density residential area (apartments and small houses). People trying to get to the residential streets have to stop in the left through lane in order to make a left turn. The base perimeter runs along the right side of the road so there is no way to go left by making a sequence of rights.

Making left-hand turns is as American as apple pie. But remember, we once accepted slavery and the beating of wives and children.
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Talk about lazy, childish writing. He could just as easily have said, instead: "we once accepted cars without seat belts and even drunken driving - if unofficially."

And in an age of drivers watching the road far less than they used to, I have to wonder how often cars turning right (legally) on a red light hit pedestrians who have the right of way. (Something I never had to worry about as a little kid in the 1970s, IIRC.)

Lenona, I did a bit of poking around and found a report from the DoT on pedestrian fatalities. The data is kind of old now (it summarizes data from 1997-2006), so take it with that grain of salt. But the big thing that jumped out at me in a brief scan was that about 3/4 of all pedestrian fatalities occurred in between intersections. So it looks like the #1 rule for pedestrian survival is: don't jaywalk.

Wouldn't the "three rights make a left" formulation, if everyone followed it fairly consistently, mean we would be driving a lot more miles? Not each trip, but the total miles driven in a year would increase. So, we can either have no left turns and use up more fossil fuels, thus stabbing Gaia in the heart, or make those horribly dangerous left turns. Won't someone think of the children?

Straight ahead must account for 41.2% (100 - (53.1 + 5.7)) then so we are exchanging one left (53.1) for at least one straight through (41.2%) and three rights (5.7). I have no idea of how to calculate that but I don't the gain is going to be that great and I bet congestion around there is going to be worse.

In the city near me the main drag has only one available left turn (down town). The side streets are a mess. and it is six blocks out of your way... go ahead one, turn right, go ahead two (first street is one way wrong way), turn rt, go 1 blk, turn rt, go two blocks.

Wouldn't the "three rights make a left" formulation, if everyone followed it fairly consistently, mean we would be driving a lot more miles?

Yes, but seeing that would require "alittlesense." And in my county, where the highway department has destroyed a number of businesses by putting in 300-yard medians at a number of intersections to prevent people from making left turns into strip malls and corner business clusters, we waste time and fuel, and increase pollution levels at those intersections, by having to overshoot the target, exercise the U-turn half a mile down the road, come back, wait the light AGAIN, and then turn into the business. Or give up in disgust and shop elsewhere, in which case the business goes under. I could lead you to the empty shell that was the first casualty in my area, and to a nearly-empty strip that used to be thriving before the county highway assholes got their plans on it.