Talk:Yellow trap

WTF? Is this some kind of joke?

"In this illustration, the driver of the red car observes that his light is about to turn red."

This means you lost your chance to turn left. (on a yellow you must stop if it is safe to do so, and you are already stopped) You must wait until you get a green light. Your frustration and impatience does not grant you the right to disobey traffic laws.

"This driver is under the impression that the opposing signal is turning red as well, and that the blue car will come to a stop."

Even if the opposing signal really were turning red, only the most suicidal/homicidal driver would assume that the other car will correctly stop. He may be a bad driver or face unexpected difficulty in stopping.

24.170.165.214 (talk) 05:50, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

No sources at hand right now, but in the concept of a yellow trap, one assumes that the car in question has already entered the intersection on green and must vacate it as the signal turns yellow then red. Clearing the intersection carries the same dangers as other instances where right-of-way is assumed but may not be possible to execute. Mapsax (talk) 03:46, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Are you suggesting that he stopped in the intersection? That would be evil and stupid in a big way, and I really hope he gets hit by something like a dumptruck or armored personal carrier. It is impossible to design a traffic control device that will make suicidal idiots drive correctly. One should never enter an intersection if there is reason to believe that one cannot smoothly proceed through it without stopping. 24.170.165.214 (talk) 04:54, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Not sure where you're from, but everywhere I've been (41 U.S. states and 2 provinces in Canada) it's common practice for a vehicle turning left on a green signal to enter the intersection past the stop line while yielding to oncoming traffic. Mapsax (talk) 22:25, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

^ what they said. If I came from here in the UK to a state which had lights that phased like this, I'd probably get run into on the first day. It's a crazy way of setting up your light phasing (or perhaps lazy, given the justifications given in the text; our traffic light systems are just as old and/or cheap as yours, but I've never seen any set up like this) and one that is almost guaranteed to cause the kind of conflicts, misunderstandings and collisions that a traffic light controlled junction is usually installed to PREVENT. From an engineering / rules of the road point of view, it's completely fine; the problem is, when you introduce traffic, and human beings who need to get across the intersection in decent time, it falls to bits. The usual way a 4-way light works, particularly at simpler intersections (say a pair of 2-lane roads crossing, each expanding to 3 lanes at the junction to incorporate a left-turn lane), is it turns green, you pull forward a little (generally to a little before the midpoint, so you're crossing oncoming left-turn traffic passenger side-to-passenger side and not blocking their straight-on lane), and wait either for a gap, or for the lights to start changing. The slight lull where the oncoming traffic comes to a halt, but the cross traffic either hasn't yet got its act together or (hopefully!) hasn't yet got a green light, then becomes your gap, a small, enforced window in the otherwise potentially impenetrable head-on lane. A well engineered and programmed set of lights will allow for this and have a slightly extended 4-way red (and amber phase...) if considered necessary to allow all vehicles that have already entered the intersection (i.e. are no longer behind the line but are in a position that would conflict with at least one direction of cross traffic) to safely clear it. Not entirely in line with the published rules of how to drive at traffic lights, but then THOSE don't take busy suburban traffic into account either, as they were written before the idea of such things existed. Your choice is to either do that, or be trapped behind the line (where the rules often say you should sit until there's a gap) for several hours until the head-on traffic dies down.

The intersections with filter lights should alleviate some of the stress involved in these situations, but only if they're properly phased, to avoid short-circuiting drivers' habits and instincts, or potentially leaving them trapped for a long time inside the intersection waiting for the head-on traffic to finally stop, even though their direction turned red some time earlier. The filters should, if possible, lag behind the main ones (IE not turn on until after the main set have gone green) instead of leading them, and favour entir..........

Ooh, wait. Hmm. I'm now wondering if there ARE some situations round here that are *stealth* yellow traps. Mainly junctions where the trappable turn is so rare as to almost never happen, and strongly discouraged (though not actually banned) by the design and layout of the intersection, and likely to cause you to catch hell from your fellow drivers for trying it. I might have to go and think this through. The two particular crossroads I have in mind are rather odd ones, tightly constrained by the geography on which they're build and massively OTT (and 90 degree) traffic flows for their actual grading, however. They're decidedly not standard issue. Much more like a T-junction with a more minor road bodged on the top of it, and the main flows are between both the two arms of the T, and also between one of the arms and the stalk (both ways in each case), with priority turn lights (left one way, right the other) for the latter case. Straight crossings to/from the minor road, and non-conflict turns onto it are the norm; conflict turns on or off it (or indeed non-conflict off-turns) are rare, as there's simply much easier ways round that don't require any longer a driving time, and attract far less ire from other drivers (naturally these are tight british roadway where the widest example in any of the above is about 10m / 30ft wide in total, and the narrowest probably half that).

This is definitely not the case elsewhere though. Generally, both sides stop at once, only one direction is allowed to go at a time (possibly with a nested priority turn) or the conflict turn is segregated out and completely prohibited until the oncoming traffic has itself been stopped. And with that I'm going to stop because that little brainfault up above has completely thrown me, and I'll need to re-read and rethink everything, including whether I actually have much of an argument any more, before coming back to it. 193.63.174.211 (talk) 18:31, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

Term?

Would one of the terms currently in the article describe the following scenario?

• Instead of thorough traffic lights for the opposite direction remaining green - they change to red for one or two seconds before immediately turning green again with an advance green afterwards (the same as after a yellow trap light turns red). It's believed to be a safer, but possibly less efficient approach that has been used.

Note that the above is not intended as a how-to, but rather an encyclopedic detail. mechamind90 06:33, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Stub

I wrote the German article. However, I do not have the time to write the English article also, I am not a native English speaker, and Google translate is cr*p. Anyone here who can bring the content from de:Yellow Trap to this article? --ManuelNeuerFan1 (talk) 21:59, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

The German Article is by far more detailed and as it seems more accurate. I also do not have the time and I am no native English speaker. Maybe deepl.com help (not perfect, but less cr*p the google translate.192.166.198.53 (talk) 00:58, 18 November 2021 (UTC)