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“I don’t want to move to a city where the only cultural advantage is being able to make a right turn on a red light.” To Woody Allen’s New Yorker audience and sensibilities, it was a withering critique. But to every native son of Southern California, it remains a chest-thumping source of pride: the right turn on red.
I’ve just returned to Sydney after my first visit to the city of my birth – Long Beach, California – since I became an Australian citizen last year. I pledged my loyalty, under God, to Australia and its people, and I meant it. Australia is “home” now, and while away there was much that I was eager to return to (not least the way we treat one another). But to be loyal is to be constructive, and I have some good, constructive American critique for my new homeland: we need to embrace the “right” turn on red (which in our case is a left).
It’s a sensational bit of public freedom that every Aussie should be able to enjoy.
Imagine this: you are driving about the city, fighting the traffic and the stress is mounting. Just as you approach an upcoming intersection, ready to hang a left – botheration! – amber and then red, and this even though the cross street is not busy. You come to a complete stop. But instead of staring blankly into the middle distance as your finite mortal seconds tick by, you carefully peer right, and note that no cross traffic is coming. Then, you responsibly check the pedestrian crossings in front of you and to your left, and observe that all pedestrians are safely clear of the road.
Then, magnificence incarnate, you are entrusted by your society to make this safe left-hand turn all under the power of your own good judgment, without the light ever having changed back to green. Bliss!
Fellow citizens of Australia, we need this freedom – and not merely, as it stands, at a handful of scattered intersections with a “left turn on red permitted after stopping” sign. No, on all of them! I put it to Chris Minns, Jacinta Allan and their fellow premiers. Minns raised the speed in tunnels; let’s roll on to another great driving reform!
The advantages go on and on. First, though the turn on red is often thought to be the preserve of wide roads and mid-century grids (such as Long Beach), it has perhaps even more usefulness on our narrow and congested roads. How often are our pre-modern streets one lane short of being able to handle all three of left-turning, right-turning and straight-on traffic? Sydney’s Cleveland Street and the Eastern Distributor – need I say more? Letting a left-turning car make a responsible escape clears the way for through-traffic behind, and as an added environmental advantage, shaves petrol-burning idling off a journey every time it happens.
Widespread turn on red would also say something important about our values as a culture – a case of personal responsibility over burgeoning safetyism. Even in the automotive Shangri-La that is Southern California (home to the world’s longest car park, the 405 freeway), some seek to abolish the turn on red in highly urban areas in the name of increasing pedestrian safety. But that’s an argument for the perfectly effective “no turn on red” sign where conditions require it, not for taking away the opportunity for responsible judgment from all the other intersections.
There is a lot of talk lately about cohesion and the restoration of social trust. This, I think, is the best argument for the left turn on red. We should want to live in a society where we can trust one another to make decisions that have serious weight to them. It is a tiny example of the fact that we don’t need, and shouldn’t want, government guardrails to mediate every interpersonal interaction. Far better to make the decision to trust one another and then act consistently in a manner that deserves it.
As an immigrant to this great nation, I proffer the fruits of my culture: the left turn on red. It’s freedom. It’s responsibility. It’s a victory for the dignity and judgment of every driver each time they do it safely.
Antone Martinho-Truswell is an author, evolutionary biologist and cultural commentator at the University of Sydney.
Antone Martinho-Truswell is a zoologist and evolutionary biologist. He is a research affiliate of the University of Sydney.From our partners
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