Can you turn right on red in Connecticut?

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July 2, 1979, Section B, Page 2Buy Reprints

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STAMFORD, Conn., July 1— Connecticut today became the 49th state to allow drivers to make right turns at red lights unless a sign at the intersection prohibits such turns, virtually completing a nationwide traffic pattern that was designed for convenience and is now mandated to conserve gasoline.

But as implementation of the law approached in Connecticut, more and more “No Turn on Red” signs were posted by local officials fighting a rearguard action that state officials said would ultimately have to fade away. Of the 10,600 intersections in the state with traffic lights, 4,300 have “no turn” signs.

Rules permitting right turns on red started in California in 1937 as a modest and ultimately successful experiment to ease the flow of traffic. Since then they have been adopted state by state with the encouragement of traffic officials who say the practice has proved to be safe as well as economical.

Connecticut's Transportation Commissioner, Arthur B. Powers, estimated that cutting waiting time at red lights would save motorists in the state a million gallons of gasoline a year.

Massachusetts, the last state to hold out, is framing state enabling legislation, and the new administration of Gov. Edward J. King has decided to go along with the change.

New York City officials say, however, that they will continue their fight against allowing right turns at red lights.

The city's Transportation Commissioner, Anthony R. Ameruso, wrote to Federal energy officials last February that the system would “lead to a new urban environmental blight called sign proliferation.”

“We fear,” he said, “that our highly successful record of reducing pedestrian accidents, fatalities and injuries is being jeopardized by the injection of an unwarranted absentee management into local traffic control.”

New York City and Massachusetts have kept an “Eastern rule” that, under Federal law, must be replaced by the end of the year with the “Western rule.” The Western rule allows right turns at red lights except where a sign prohibits them, while the Eastern rule allows such turns only where a sign specifically says they are permitted.

The city now has about 200 signs that specify “Right Turn on Red Permitted.” Local officials said that if New York could not win an exemption from the Federal law, the city would either have to put up 8,000 “No Turn on Red” signs at city intersections with traffic signals or recondition pedestrians’ habits.

City officials will plead their case for an exemption at a meeting July 9 in New York City with Federal transportation and energy officials.

Donald P. Ryan, chief of the signs and markings branch of the Federal Office of Traffic Operations, said the local governments in Connecticut that have been fighting right-turn-on-red rules were overreacting.

“Local officials,” he said, “tend to see the right‐turn rule as ‘pedestrian beware,’ but that has not been the experience nationwide.”

1 “Eastern areas tend to be much more conservative and basically unrealistic about the right‐turn law,” Mr. Ryan added. “We saw a lot of the `no turn’ signs in Maryland, Virginia, other states, but they're corning down now and probably will in time in Connecticut.”

When California started the system, it first put up signs permitting right turns, after a full stop, at red lights. As the number of signs grew, it was decided to make such turns the rule, except where specifically prohibited by a sign. California also passed a strict law giving pedestrians the right of way at designated walkways and set a fine of $75 for violations, an extremely high fine in 1937.

In 1976, when more than 30 states had adopted the system, the Federal Energy Department ordered every state to adopt a system permitting some form of right turns on red. Many Eastern states then chose the system of allowing the turns only where a sign specifically permitted them.

Mr. Ryan said fewer accidents occurred when a motorist came to complete halt at a red light and then turned right than when a vehicle proceeded without stopping through a green light and made a right turn, a conclusion he said would be supported by a report being prepared by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials.