Honestly Officer, the light was yellow!

PoorUB said:

Wow! So you are driving along at 30 MPH, the speed limit. 10 feet from the intersection, the light turns yellow and you are expected to stop??



I figured that, so the law is meaningless, poorly written. Totally up to the officer to decide. Where is the point that it is ok to enter on a yellow to where it isn't? Totally subjective.

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The driving rule is that yellow=stop. Everyone should plan to stop on yellow unless they are so close to the intersection entrance when the change to yellow occurs that stopping is not safely possible.

The state code or statute allows a law enforcement officer to apply common sense discretion. It’s not intended as a “get out of jail free” card that drivers can use to avoid stopping on yellow in any situation.

vark said:

The driving rule is that yellow=stop. Everyone should plan to stop on yellow unless they are so close to the intersection entrance when the change to yellow occurs that stopping is not safely possible.

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I don't find that as easy or easy to figure as the "smart" intersections are running algorithms based on traffic......around here. The recent transitions of left turns to oncoming traffic on flashing yellow arrow is rather scary. No doubt all of this is geared to reducing traffic back-ups. Not sure beyond that.
OM

30 mph is 44 feet per second, so if you're 10 feet from the intersection, it would take you a hair over one-quarter of a second to travel that distance. That is faster than the typical human's reaction time (perception + braking + the vehicle actually stopping), so no intelligent officer with decent perception could issue a ticket; you could fight that if he did.

In the December 2007 issue of Motorcycle Consumer News, Dave Searle wrote an interesting piece on his detailed planning to fight a red light ticket. If it's OK with the moderators (copyright? maybe expired?), I could post it here; it's a 500K pdf.

Pauls1150 said:

30 mph is 44 feet per second, so if you're 10 feet from the intersection, it would take you a hair over one-quarter of a second to travel that distance. That is faster than the typical human's reaction time (perception + braking + the vehicle actually stopping), so no intelligent officer with decent perception could issue a ticket; you could fight that if he did....

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Being 10 feet from the intersection when the light turns yellow obviously falls within the exception parameters.

As mentioned in an earlier post, many major intersections have hash/dash lines in the approaches that provide guidance on whether to proceed or stop on yellow. Unfortunately, too many drivers are unaware of their meaning/purpose.

Guidance from the Feds, which states follow or even use more restrictive rules, requires a yellow to be on 3-6 seconds based on the speed limit of the road. The numbers are based on stopping distance to include a 1.4 second reaction time. If you look at the where the white lines go from dashed to straight, that is generally a good indicator of where you should be able to stop or continue. The solid lines are usually longer where the speed limit is higher and the yellow light longer.


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pkpilot said:

Guidance from the Feds, which states follow or even use more restrictive rules, requires a yellow to be on 3-6 seconds based on the speed limit of the road. The numbers are based on stopping distance to include a 1.4 second reaction time. If you look at the where the white lines go from dashed to straight, that is generally a good indicator of where you should be able to stop or continue. The solid lines are usually longer where the speed limit is higher and the yellow light longer.


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Sounds like you've given this some thought.......