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Lights
Raven my criteria for this violation has always been the same. If I am sitting at/on an interection watching for this violation I would never stop someone if the light was red and the front tires of the vehicle I was watching was beyond the stop line, which in some cases is the crosswalk, into the intersection. In other words for me to stop a vehicle/operator for the red light violation the tires of the vehicle had to be on or behind the stop line/crosswalk, and not in the intersection. As we all know the yellow lights tells us to come to a stop and you have to be stopped when the light turns red. (O.K. insert jokes here) But there is also a margin of safety that covers what you relayed to us as your particular circumstances Raven. There are other circumstances when a vehicle and driver might get stopped, such as; flooring it to get through the intersection, coming up behind someone whose chose to stop in one lane and then switch lanes to go around the "safe driver" and go through the intersection. If the first car had the time and common sense then the second one should have, yada, yada, yada.
In Massachusetts the legal speed through any intersection, with or without traffic controls, is 20 m.p.h. No it has never been changed.
How many people turning left in an intersection do you see turn left in front of traffic as opposed to waiting and turning when thier view is clear after the traffic coming in the opposite direction passes by. Somebody does that in front of you and then it starts in both directions. Nobody can see clealyeither way. When you arrived at the crash that will inevitably occur, the first thing someone says to you is "I couldn't see", well ya, no chit, you turned left in front of a tri-axle dump truck. Why do you think you couldn't see? This is why MikeP and Bronko are so busy and the motoring public will always need us.
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