What made you smile today?

[Xelbair]

Rule #1 about lights in the US: If the light turned green (including short green arrows), you're never 100% safe. Look anyway, someone might be blowing the red light (probably will be) after a few ran the yellow. This is why there is usually a slight delay in a light turning green. All will be red for at least a half second.

All those arrows are crazy. We force our drivers to look around.

Isn't looking a common sense? someone might be disregarding his red light. there is a longer delay in here - depends, but it is few seconds.

wtf is the 3rd set from the right??

edit: oh.. right, it's u-turn + turn left. It confused me because the diagram starts off by going left instead of going straight, then left.

In Australia, you can't do a u-turn unless a separate sign underneath the traffic lights say you can. Liberties are taken though. Yellow lights generally last for around 2 seconds, while there's a 0.5 to 1 second gap when everything is red, like Ryll says. It's... generally pretty safe here when you see a green. I've only seen one guy run a red without looking, and I was a pedestrian crossing.

3rd set from right? you can either turn left, or do an U-turn. you can't do U-turns ONLY if there is a sign forbidding it.

Running red lights is normal here. It is even stranger not to see one in every light change in busy major intersections. The traffic police tolerate it because stopping them to give them a ticket will worsen the delay of traffic even more.

same here.. also police doesn't bother with even being near crossings most of the time - they find a sweet spots with messed up signs to get free 'pocket' money from unaware drivers.

[shinta|hikari]

same here.. also police doesn't bother with even being near crossings most of the time - they find a sweet spots with messed up signs to get free 'pocket' money from unaware drivers.

It seems traffic police all over the world share the same characteristics.

[Kraco]

same here.. also police doesn't bother with even being near crossings most of the time - they find a sweet spots with messed up signs to get free 'pocket' money from unaware drivers.

It seems traffic police all over the world share the same characteristics.

Police corruption is quite low over here. The traffic police does have some sweet spots, but those are actually real places where drivers regularly ignore red lights (or signs or speed limits), for one reason or another. I also don't remember any places with really confusing signs. In fact I'd like for the police to do more. I bike a lot more than drive a car, and the population in these parts could pay more attention to signs when they are driving. The cops seem to ignore those careless drivers oft enough even if it happens right in front of them, if they aren't specifically looking for such incidents. I guess I could call it police laziness instead of police corruption. But then again, the police has been hit every bit as bad by the budget cuts as any other useful institution of late, so I can't really blame them too much.

[Animeniax]

Police corruption is quite low over here. The traffic police does have some sweet spots, but those are actually real places where drivers regularly ignore red lights (or signs or speed limits), for one reason or another. I also don't remember any places with really confusing signs. In fact I'd like for the police to do more. I bike a lot more than drive a car, and the population in these parts could pay more attention to signs when they are driving. The cops seem to ignore those careless drivers oft enough even if it happens right in front of them, if they aren't specifically looking for such incidents. I guess I could call it police laziness instead of police corruption. But then again, the police has been hit every bit as bad by the budget cuts as any other useful institution of late, so I can't really blame them too much.

In my country... unless they are specifically assigned to traffic detail, the police are discouraged by their superiors from pursuing traffic violations while they are on patrol in a sector. They will only stop the most egregious violations, but most will be ignored because they want the officers available to respond to trouble calls, not spend all their time issuing citations (which would surely happen because people break traffic laws all day long). Not sure if this is how police operate in Finland.

[Kraco]

Not sure if this is how police operate in Finland.

That would certainly explain it. It's probably the case over here as well, then.