people that do an emergency stop when the lights change are dangerous and wrong

[magrate]

I drive for about two hours everyday for my new job. Have to go through over 20 sets of lights. So many people think that as soon as the lights change you must stop. Aibu to expect people to still go though a second after they go red?

Red means stop and I see very few people running red lights (except on junctions without a filter where you'd be stuck in the middle of the road if you didn't go right, so people tend to go - my dad once received a penalty notice for doing just that so it's a risk but I see it happen all the time).

But yes it's dangerous to do an emergency stop when it changes to amber, you should carry on if you are already about to cross the white line and the car behind you should stop. In reality nobody crawls up to traffic lights at 5mph in case they change so realistically the first car at least will need to keep going.

What I find quite weird is the lights in Jersey and Australia, where they go straight from red to green when turning to go so there's no amber phase.

Also there's no need to slam your brakes on when you come into a 30mph zone, taking your foot off the accelerator and letting the car slow down as you approach the zone works fine.

If you have to use your brake hard all the time, you are either going too fast or not anticipating, or both. And I say that as someone who drives an automatic so can't use the gears to slow me down.

i'm with the vast majority here! i cannot believe that ANYONE would crash instead of an emergency stop - what an idiot

You can go through on amber if stopping would be more dangerous, but of course you can't go through on red

I always slow on approaches to crossing anyway in the event the lights change, because, you know, thats what lights do!

Nothing pisses me off more than when I'm waiting at a junction to turn right and someone coming the opposite way decides to sneak through as the lights turn red...how dangerous...

If, as magrate said in one of her later posts, people are crossing the stop line on green and then slamming the brakes on, because the light has turned amber, then she is right, they are wrong to do this, and they should complete the manoeuvre. She has said that the stop line is a long way back from the actual junction, so the lights' sequence should be set up so that a car that crosses the line on green will have time to finish crossing the actual junction before the lights go green in the other direction.

But she would be wrong to say that you should not stop if the lights change as you get to the stop line, and that is what my understanding of her OP is.

I have been far more aware of my stopping distances since an incident last year, when I was on the motorway. Thankfully the traffic was moving fairly slowly, and I had a good space between me and the car in front, because his exhaust fell off - a cylinder of metal some 8" in diameter and about 8" tall, with the exhaust pipe attached, came bouncing down the carriageway towards me! I had seen that it was flapping loosely in the breeze an instant before, and was decelerating, but I still ended up driving over this lump of metal (if I had swerved, I would have caused an accident, because I was in the centre lane, with traffic in both other lanes - including a big artic, in the righthand lane).

I did an emergency stop as this thing went under my car. The car behind me stopped safely, and then went round me and carried on his way. The van behind him also stopped safely, but the van behind him was driving either too close, too fast or inattentively, and crashed into the first van. I have been called to court as a witness in the prosecution of the second van driver for his careless driving.

Ever since then, I have been very careful indeed to make sure that I have plenty of stopping distance - frankly, I would rather have a bit too much than too little.

Yabu you have to stop at a red. If you go into the back of someone who stops you too close!

you are a really bad driver, OP. Please take some lessons or (preferably) get the bus.

it may not be just you that you kill.

My car flashes up a triangle symbol when I'm too close to the car in front, it's good as sometimes you may not notice and it does make you think about your stopping distance. And it beeps loudly if you are approaching a stationary car (turning for example).

yabu
did you win your license in the lottery or what?

YABU.

I suggest you carry on as you are and wait for your notice of intention to prosecute. If you're lucky, you might get the chance to go on a traffic signal awareness course, where you can learn all about red lights. You'll pay £100 and lose three hours of your life but you will be very clear on these matters.

or so I am told

try jumping the lights at a level crossing if you think it is so clever.

Strange how careful drivers are when THEY might get hit by a train, but don't give a damn about pedestrians.

thatbloodywoman i am almost speechless. that poor man. a lot of people think something is 'all their fault' due to shock. of course it was not his fault.

Fucking hell! You need your license removing. It's a shame we have to share our roads with morons like you.

I hope you have a policeman follow you very, very soon OP. You sound a danger on the road.

Good point choccy
I see far fewer ppl running the read light on a level crossing
thatbloodywoman your dh was in the wrong. I have no idea why the driver he crashed into erroneously admitted liability. Your dh was either driving too fast or too close or both and put the safety of you, your pfb and the other road users at risk.
You can deny it a hundred times a minute but that is what he did.
Anyway, nobody was hurt so its a learning opportunity. The trouble he has learned nothing from it. Scary.
I wonder if strongly suspect the driver who nearly killed me by hitting me on a crossing thought it was my fault for being on the pedestrian crossing.

Of course you shouldn't do an emergency stop at an amber light because there's never any need to do an emergency stop. You'd just do a normal stop, like a normal person approaching traffic lights. An emergency stop is for when a child runs out in front of your car or a car pulls out unexpectedly - an emergency situation. Approaching traffic lights, which tend to change regularly, and having to adapt to the colour shown is not an emergency.

This really seems like the message has got twisted. "Don't do an emergency stop at traffic lights" (because you should be doing a normally controlled stop) has become "sail through the lights on red or amber because it's safer"

I do sometimes wonder that, if cars were invented today, at their modern level of technology/speed would we even allow them on the roads right next to pedestrians?

Railways were designed to be out of the way and back then trains had an average speed of about 45mph.

When you think of the mentality of some drivers coupled with the speed and weight of modern cars it is quite scary.

amber also means stop

YY, dp got a ticket last year for driving through an amber light. The driver awareness course explained this, green means go, red and Amber, stop.

My op was badly worked but did no one read my reply? I'm following the highway code. The fine for jumping a red light is only 100? Gosh I shouldn't of felt so guilty about doing this recently at a broken temp traffic light that was stuck on red.

My op was about people doing emergency stops when they shouldn't.

Amber means ‘stop’ (if it’s safe to do so).

Red means ‘stop’. No ifs, no buts, simply ‘stop’.

When approaching green lights, you should be preparing to stop, and aware that the vehicle in front may stop, because the green changing to amber is imminent.

If you need to slam on your brakes to avoid hitting the vehicle in front, you’re driving too close.

So YABVU, and it’s scary that you drive so much and don’t know this already.

Your attitude baffles me OP. The fine is 'only' £100 so it's okay?

Like I said, carry on.

I don't believe there are junctions where the White line is far enough away from the actual lights that they can turn from green to red before you reach them

Nope OP you are still in the wrong. If this is an issue for you, the learning you should take from it is not that other people aren't following the highway code but that you are driving too close.

So, for the avoidance of doubt, you are driving too close.

Red means stop.
Red means stop.
Red means stop.
Red means stop.

Anyone who crashes into someone who stops at red deserves the resulting sky-high insurance premiums.

And disqualification if they believe red means "stop only if it's been red for some time".

In some countries, drivers actually obey the rule about giving way to pedestrians when turning; so much so that junctions don't need a "pedestrians only" phase. Here in the uk, we have to put up with that phase where the entire junction has red lights when the green men are on (and the lights often stay red for about ten seconds after as well).