Screwy Stoplights

Well, it happened. The stoplight at George Bush Drive and Harvey Mitchell Parkway is now the flashing yellow arrow type, replacing the "Doghouse Dallas" one that all the lights use normally. And that's a terrible idea: here's why.

The "Yellow Trap" just makes it worse.

Under the old system, there were five "balls" (and yes, that is an official terms, apparently) on the left hand turn light: Red, Green, Yellow, Green Left Arrow, Yellow Left Arrow. Obviously, a solid red meant "no go". Red + Green Left Arrow meant traffic was normally stopped in the lane you were in, but you could go left (almost always in conjunction with the traffic directly ahead of you also turning left), Green + Green Left Arrow meant you were with the lanes next to you, with the Yellow Left Arrow meaning time was running out on either one. A solid green, as the driver's handbook told us, meant you could go, but you didn't have the right of way, so you could turn left if no one was coming, which depending on the road, was easy or nearly impossible. For the most part, it works. For less confusion sometimes, the red light didn't turn on at all when there was a Green Left Arrow (Villa Maria and Texas is the only one I could think of)

In other systems, there was an independent left hand turn light with red, yellow, and green, or arrows thereof, and basically accomplished the same thing without yielding.

But the flashing yellow arrow makes it more confusing. In the left hand turn lane, there are four balls: the yellow arrow, the yellow flashing arrow, the green arrow, and the red arrow. The green arrow and red arrow are, naturally, stop and go, but the yellow one is different. The yellow one appears after the green one (protected) goes away but the flashing one is different: it means "no right of way", which is the solid green.

We as drivers are trained to think of yellow as "speed up or slow down", so there's entirely a problem of someone seeing a blinking yellow, speeding up because they believe they still have the right of way, smashing into another car who actually does. Additionally, unlike the "solid yellow" meaning the "your time of turning left at all is ending" has no equivalent.

Have fun!