The Right Hand Rule
Summer Issue: November 2008
There is evidence that our give way rules are a factor in the 2,560 intersection crashes, and one or two deaths, each year.
This has been known in official circles for 10 years, but all efforts - by the Minister of Transport Safety, the Ministry of Transport, the Land Transport Agency, Police, local government, the Institution of Professional Engineers, Cyclists Advocates Network, Living Streets Aotearoa and the AA - to change the rule have been voted down by a Cabinet concerned it would be too hard for the public to cope with.
The current give way rule was introduced in 1977 and holds that a vehicle turning right takes precedence over a vehicle turning left. The rule came from Victoria, Australia originally to assist trams on Melbourne's streets.
But Victoria changed back in 1993 and experienced a decline in intersection crashes as a result.
Today, New Zealand is the only country in the world with this priority rule.
The most obvious deficiency with the existing rule occurs when two cars travelling in opposite directions reach a T-intersection at the same time.
In theory, the car turning right across the oncoming stream of traffic has precedence over the car turning left with the traffic behind it.
But the car turning right may have to first give way to oncoming traffic following behind the turning vehicle. The driver of the car turning left has to guess - will the car turning right across the traffic wait for another car coming up behind to pass through the intersection? If so, there is time to slip around the corner. Or, will the driver turning right risk crossing in front of the car approaching from behind the one signalling left? In that case, the left-turning driver must wait.
At this point, the driver workload is very high for all parties, so pedestrians crossing the street or cyclists on the inside of the stream of traffic are at greatest risk of being overlooked and hit.
Of course, this assumes the car signalling to turn left really intends doing so. Sometimes people are signalling because they have forgotten to turn their indicator off; anyone turning right across their path will get a very nasty surprise. Police attend 40 to 50 injury crashes of this type a year.
A suggested change of the right hand rule
would see right-turning vehicles give way.
Then there is the situation which always confuses: two cars at an intersection, both wishing to turn right. A good example of this is when you are exiting from the car park and want to turn right to the opposite side of the road. Then another car stops on your left signalling to turn right into the car park you're leaving. Under the current rule, if there is no traffic proceeding across in front of you (from the right), you have right of way over the car in the street signalling a right turn. The car waiting to enter the car park must give way - to the oncoming cars, and all the cars on their right, exiting from the car park. That can be a long wait in fast-moving traffic.
In practice, many prefer to get out of the stream of traffic coming up fast behind them by disobeying the give way rule altogether.
The alternatives are both simpler and safer. With a left-turn priority, when two cars reach the T-intersection together, the car turning left only has to check for hazards on the left, and turn.
The right-turning car must give way to everyone, so the risk of making a mistake is minimal.
At the car park exit, the car exiting always gives way; the car entering merely gives way to opposing traffic. Again, it's simpler and safer.
Which is why the rest of the world doesn't use our give way system, and this in itself is important. New Zealand receives 2.4 million overseas visitors per year. Two-thirds of these are Australians, Britons and Americans who are more likely to self-drive than let a coach operator show them around. This means that in summer there could be up to 100,000 tourists at any given time driving on a foreign licence following the give way rules that they learned at home.
A change from the right-hand turner having priority to the left-hand turner having priority would require a transitional public education campaign, but the benefit would certainly be greater than the cost.