As Jen Sees It

And not the “Oh, god, traffic is SOOOO bad, I am always stuck in traffic” kind of traffic.  I’m talking about the rules of the road here today, people, so listen up!

• Let’s start with red lights.  If you need to make a U-turn and you pull up to a light that has a little left arrow that is red, it is illegal to make ANY TURN.  You can’t just decide that the arrow only applies to LEFT turns and go ahead and make a U-turn.  I can’t believe how many people do this.  The little red arrow is there for a reason.  Usually because to make a turn you have to see past one or more lines of traffic at the red arrow on the other side of the intersection, not to mention being able to make the turn in front of several lanes of oncoming traffic.  Engineers made that a protected (i.e. you don’t get to go when the people going straight get to go) signal for a reason.  They don’t want you (or the person you might hit) to die.
• Let’s move on to signage.  Remember the old song that goes “signs, signs, everywhere are signs…”?  It’s true, there are signs everywhere.  Well, traffic signs are there to guide you and help make traffic flow more smoothly.  The problem is that no one pays attention to them.  In Jacksonville, where I used to live, there was an intersection where the right turn lane was separated from the thru traffic by a median.  When you made the turn, you got a whole new lane.  There was a large hunk of concrete followed by a solid white line to allow you to make your turn safely.  Finally, there was neither a stop sign nor a yield sign.  So what all this combines for is a continuous right turn lane — hey, folks you don’t have to stop, you don’t have to yield, you just turn right.  There’s no traffic signal that you have to pay attention to, you just GO!  I can not tell you how many people would stop at that intersection because (1) they THOUGHT they were supposed to or (2) they felt that they had to immediately cross the three lanes of traffic to make a left turn three miles down the road.  Now I live in Tampa and at intersections like this, they actually put up a sign that says something along the lines of “Keep Moving” or “Do Not Stop”.  You know, people STILL stop.  So, anyway, the point here is, PAY ATTENTION TO SIGNAGE lest you get rear ended.  Then we have the sign that almost got someone rear ended by ME this morning.  I’m pulling up to a signalized intersection with a green right turn arrow.  The people on the cross street are turning left and one of those guys decides to do a U-turn.  I know for a fact that there is a sign next to the left turn signal on the cross-street that says that U-turn traffic is to yield to right turns.  Well, this guy doesn’t yield, the guy in front of me stops and I have to slam on the brakes to avoid ramming him from behind.  Another fine example of people not reading signs.
• Next up: LANE LINES. Here’s the deal with solid lane lines — NEVER CROSS A SOLID LANE LINE.  I don’t care if it’s white or yellow, it’s illegal and unsafe to cross a solid lane line. You are not supposed to change lanes if the line on your side is solid!  So for the above post with the solid white line and the people immediately crossing those three lanes of traffic — that’s just bad driving.  What do the colors mean, yellow, white? What’s the deal.  OK, here’s the breakdown: yellow lines separate traffic moving in opposite directions (like on a two-lane roadway, there will be either two solid yellow lines or a yellow dashed line down the middle, or you may have a striped median all in yellow).  White lines separate traffic moving in the same direction, so on a multi-lane roadway you will have either a white dashed line between lanes signifying that you can change lanes or a solid white line between lanes, signifying to stay in your own lane.  Often the solid white lines are accompanied by a sign that says “Stay in own lane”, especially in construction zones.
• What about turns?  When you make a left turn you are supposed to turn into the left lane corresponding to what lane you turned from.  If you are in the inside left turn lane, you turn into the left-most lane.  If you are in the next turn lane over you turn to the second left-most lane.  If you are making a right, you turn to the right-most lane.  What does this mean?  It means that if you are making a left onto a two lane road and there’s one left turn lane and someone wants to make a right onto the same roadway you can actually both go at the same time because you will be in the left lane and they will be in the right lane — see you won’t hit each other.  Shocking, I know.
• Merging onto a highway:  I live in Florida.  Generally speaking the speed limit on the highway is either 55 mph (highly urban areas), 65 mph (urban areas), or 70 mph (rural areas).  If you are getting onto the highway and you need to merge into traffic, you probably should use the ramp to accelerate to the speed limit, because you aren’t going to be able to merge doing 40 mph!
• The left lane on highways.  This is a PASSING LANE.  You know the big white signs that say SLOWER TRAFFIC KEEP RIGHT?  Just because you’re doing 72 mph in a 70 mph doesn’t make you the “fast” traffic.  Do your passing and move your behind back over to the right lane because chances are there’s someone driving faster than you and passing you on the right is more dangerous because there are more blind spots on that side of your car (hence the passing lane being on the LEFT).

I’m sure I will come up with more traffic irritations from which I suffer, but that’s it for now.  I hope someone learned something.