Traffic lights, more harm than good?

[jamoor]

we need to be able to turn left on red.

[Antony Moxey]

Roundabouts with traffic lights are hilarious. There's one in Exeter at the end of the A30 (Moor Lane if you know it) where the lights seem to fail quite regularly, all of a sudden motorists completely forget it's now just a normal roundabout and have no idea who has priority, who has to wait or how to approach and get in the correct lane. Ironically though, the traffic does flow more smoothly with fewer unecessary tailbacks.

On the whole though, I am in favour of lights on busy roundabouts, if for nothing else than to prevent the idiots nose to tailing and blocking you from entering the roundabout, especially if you're going in a different direction to the tailback blocking you.

[Vladimir]

Got my first ever points last year in Glasgow for "running a red light"

This was a main road with adjoining residential roads all along it; the lights that "got" me were partially hidden by trees and served a very minor road - I saw them, was doing 30, had the family in the back of our camper (not far off 3 tonnes) and made a split second decision to keep rolling rather than slam on the anchors - camera flashed (also obscured by trees) and that was it - I didn't fight it but its SO annoying having a clean record ruined by what I reckon was unnecessary lights and a rather sneaky camera.

[AJI]

robinessex said:

95% of the time 95% of traffic lights are useless.

Yeah, but 60% of the time they work EVERY TIME.