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Right turns on red would be limited in Washington under bill

By David Kroman, The Seattle Times
Published: February 16, 2023, 9:58am

When Washington made it legal to turn right on a red light in 1959, concerns about pedestrian safety quickly followed.

“This new rule can bring old results: More and more and more accidents,” read one “traffic tip” published in The Seattle Times in April 1959. It told drivers they must yield to pedestrians, warning, “A FREE turn can mean a COSTLY crash.”

Sixty-four years later, with limited hard data on harm to pedestrians but plenty of intuition about driver behavior, that worry remains, and state lawmakers are considering rolling back what to many drivers has come to feel like a right.

The proposal, House Bill 1582, would ban right turns on red within 1,000 feet of areas with a high number of what it describes as vulnerable people walking: schools, libraries, senior centers, parks, hospitals, public transit hubs or anywhere else deemed necessary by local jurisdictions.

The bill is part of a suite of traffic safety legislation moving through House and Senate committees in Olympia, all intended to turn back the trend of increased deaths on the state’s roads, which topped 745 last year. If passed, Washington would become the first state to ban the practice, decades after being among the first to allow it.

For some, its usefulness at keeping cars moving and, perhaps, saving gasoline, remains critical and striking it could result in long waits at signaled intersections.

But for its proponents — even those who admit to taking advantage of the free turn — the priority should be safety.

“As much as it’s convenient, we’ve got to reorient ourselves to keeping people safe,” said Sen. Rebecca Saldana, D-Seattle.

For Jaime Torres, crossing at intersections became much more difficult in 2015. Following a brain bleed and a coma, he lost a lot of his mobility. He’s much improved today, but still uses a wheelchair and a walker.

Now, every time the traffic signal signifies “walk,” he’s terrified of getting hit: When in his wheelchair, he’s low to the ground, slower to cross and his attention is often focused on getting up and down the curb ramps. As drivers turning right look left to anticipate oncoming traffic, they often forget to check whether the crosswalk to their right is clear.

“I don’t like to feel rushed,” said Torres, 40, of Pasco. “When I feel rushed it poses a greater risk of me falling. That’s one of my greatest fears is falling in an intersection.”

Not always the law

“Sometimes we think these laws have been around since Moses, but they haven’t,” said Sen. Marko Liias, D-Lynnwood, chair of the Senate Transportation Committee, during a news conference on traffic safety last month.

For most of the country, the law allowing a turn on red dates to the 1970s, spurred by the oil crisis, said Bill Schultheiss, director of engineering for Toole Design, a transportation consulting firm. It became federal policy to allow right turns on red in 1975, when the Energy Policy and Conservation Act mandated states legalize it in order to qualify for certain federal funds.

Washington state, however, began allowing the right turns more than 15 years earlier.

Why Washington raced ahead with legalization is not made clear in the public record. But it was sponsored by Rep. Mike McCormack, a Democrat from Central Washington and longtime chemist at the former Atomic Energy Commission at Hanford, who had a keen interest in energy policy.

His proposal to allow right turns on red was widely popular among lawmakers, at least on the House side of the Washington Legislature: The bill passed, 91-4, with four members abstaining, according to the House journal kept at the time. A Senate journal was not available, but Gov. Albert Rosellini eventually signed the bill into law.

The new law required some education for Washington residents. Newspaper articles at the time reminded drivers they still needed to come to a complete stop before turning right and that pedestrians had the right of way. “If this is not done, the whole purpose of the legislation will be defeated,” one traffic engineer said at the time.

Drivers initially showed some hesitancy. In August 1959, a chief with the Washington State Patrol urged more people to use the right turn to “speed urban traffic.” In one account, a man followed a woman he recognized into a company parking lot to inform her she could have taken a quicker turn at a previous light.

Did the new law do what was intended — speed traffic and save gas?

“It’s a good question and it’s hard to prove,” said Schultheiss. “I think it’s way overstated how much we’re saving by allowing people to turn right on red. It feels like it’s true, but no one has proven it’s true.”

Still, the fear of congestion if the free turns are restricted gives some lawmakers pause, making the bill’s future uncertain.

“I just think about my commute, which is about 7 miles or so, and there’s probably about six lights at intersections along that drive,” state Rep. Mike Volz, R-Spokane, said in a committee hearing this month. “I think all of them would be affected by this.”

Safety, too, is poorly measured, in part because incident reports rarely specify if a turn occurred on a red light.

One study from Connecticut identified four fatalities in the state directly tied to rights on red over a 13-year period, 1994-2006. A 1995 study from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said just .02% of fatal crashes involved a driver turning right on red.

Closer to home, the Washington State Department of Transportation concluded that 20% of collisions involving a pedestrian or bicyclist involved a car turning right, but not necessarily on a red light. In a weeklong study of 40 intersections, the city of Bellevue found that right turns made up two-thirds of conflicts between cars and pedestrians at intersections.

In 2018, Washington, D.C., banned rights on red at 100 intersections. Data showed red light conflicts between vehicles and pedestrians were all but eliminated. Failures to yield at green lights even dropped by more than half. The district is moving to ban the turns at most intersections by 2025.

From a safety perspective, “I can see where it makes sense,” said Rep. Andrew Barkis, R-Olympia, ranking member of the House Transportation Committee. But he also expressed reticence, concerned about increased congestion and pushback from Washington residents who’ve never known anything but turns on red.

Cost could also be an issue. Tacoma estimated it would take about $3 million to install the necessary signs across the city.

But for Torres, who’s had plenty of close calls with cars, the effort would be worth it. “I would feel much more secure and confident crossing the street safely,” he said. “That would take off so much pressure.”

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