By now, you’ve probably heard someone say left turns are dangerous. You’ve probably hung a few risky lefts that felt like you’re about to drive straight into the afterlife.
According to Dr. Vikash Gayah, a civil engineering professor at Penn State and interim director of the Larson Transportation Institute, left turns at intersections are the mustache-twirling villains of urban planning. They’re responsible for 61 percent of intersection crashes, which is remarkable considering it’s one of the least common maneuvers drivers make.
Gayah argues that left turns ask you to do way too much. You have to judge oncoming traffic and look out for pedestrians at crosswalks, which is why they cause so many of one of the deadliest types of crashes, the T-bone, where a car slams head-on into the midsection of another.
This is not exactly new information, and several cities have enacted some form of ban on left turns at certain times of day. Cities like San Francisco, Salt Lake City, and Birmingham, Alabama, have banned left turns during rush hour. Instead of burning precious green-light time waiting for a gap in traffic, cars keep moving. Fewer stops, fewer crashes, more efficiency.
Should We Pump the Brakes on Left Turns?
And it isn’t just being curbed by city planners. Knowing how deadly (and costly) left turns could be, UPS redesigned its delivery routes to avoid left turns whenever possible. It’s an ingenious little move that ended up saving them millions of gallons of gas every year and probably untold millions and repairs or truck replacements.
Those spinning carousels of traffic delightfully called “roundabouts” aren’t just there to make you dizzy. By turning an intersection into one big soft and slow left turn, they help eliminate the need to make dangerous left turns that cut through crosswalks and oncoming traffic.
The problem is, they heat up valuable real estate, which may not exist in abundance in densely packed urban cores. You’re not going to be seeing many roundabouts in, say, New York City without some dramatic, ambitious, and costly construction projects. On the other hand, as Gayah told The Conversation, a “no left turn” sign costs almost nothing and doesn’t require a demolition team.
While some argue that banning left turns means routes get longer, the truth is that most drivers only add another block or two to their trips without them, which sounds like it would be adding time. But it actually decreases travel time since intersections without left turn traffic tend to be less congested.
Fuel usage drops by an average of 10 to 15 percent per trip because they don’t have to stop as much. Idling in your car leads to inefficiency. That’s gas burning while you’re not moving.
Don’t be surprised if you start to notice a sudden increase in “no left turn” signs in your city. It may seem annoying at first, but it saves time, fuel, and lives.
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