We all have had and will continue to have our time on the Corpus Christi highways and roads everyday. We follow the rules of the roads to avoid tickets and accidents to the best of our ability. This article is written to make you aware of why taking a left turn is far more dangerous than a right turn. We will show evidence of this attestation below, for you to understand this is a very serious matter while driving.
The risk of left turns is so great that UPS uses a route-optimization strategy for its delivery drivers that virtually eliminates left turns entirely.
Traffic intersections are the source of most accidents, with two-thirds of all wrecks occurring at intersections. Nearly all involve left-hand turns and human error, as drivers can’t predict who has the right-of-way or whether an oncoming driver will try to beat a red light. That’s also why UPS’s routing software, ORION, is programmed to map out each UPS driver’s routes so they don’t have to make any left-hand turns. In the future, cars won’t have to navigate traffic lights – because traffic lights and stop signs will be a thing of the past. Autonomous vehicles will breeze through intersections by communicating and remaining a safe distance from each other. Even allowing for pedestrians and bicyclists, traffic will move twice as efficiently than today’s state-of-the-art traffic lights. Gridlock will vanish, and travel will be cut to almost zero. Researchers at the Swiss Institute of Technology, the Italian National Research Council and MIT have developed a slot-based approach that borrows from the same “slotting” that air traffic controllers use to synchronize take offs and landings. The one difference is that researchers determined that traffic would flow faster if vehicles crossed intersections in groups, rather than one-by-one. So the cars in front slow down, those in back speed up – and they all clear the intersection faster.
Source: https://www.ups.com/assets/resources/media/knowledge-center/UPS_Routes-to-the-Future-Vol1.pdf pg. 12
Approximately, 22% of all car accidents involve a left turning vehicle and 53 % of all cross-path accidents are the result of left turns. Below we show a graph from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).
When a left-turn accident occurs, the accident fault usually falls on the driver who made the left-hand turn. Drivers who turn in front of oncoming traffic are supposed to yield the right-of-way before making the turn. In that case, the driver who turned in front of oncoming traffic is usually found liable.
In most cases, drivers turning left do not have the right-of-way, which means they must wait for oncoming traffic to pass before turning. When an accident occurs, the law presumes the driver making the left turn acted with negligence, and likely caused the crash.
At the Raub Law Firm, we dedicate ourselves to our clients twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. We understand the laws and the situations behind people who get in accidents involving left turns on any medium. Call us today at 361-880-8181 and get in touch with Timothy D. Raub, your local lawyer in Corpus Christi, Texas. Use our contact form to reach out to him immediately and get a response in less than twenty-four hours.