I'm from Italy and the first time we had a family vacation in the US we were honked a lot because we would stop at red lights. Only after 3 days we discovered that there's the "turn-on-red" rule and we were confused: if it's red, why can you turn?
In Italy (but I guess in all Europe works like this) we have a different approach on these situations: if the driver is at a traffic light and can make a turn, but it could be unsafe, the light turns into a blinking yellow light, so that the driver know that it must check well before going on.
I remember when right on red was first implemented. The purpose was to save on fuel during the energy crisis back in the 70s/80s. It's saves some huge amount of green house gasses. A lot of localities spent a fortune on "no right on red" signs.
Theoretically, right on red is a good thing, but theoretically, everybody follows the rules and nobody makes mistakes.
I don't see it that way: when you're merging you're going in the same direction of the traffic you're trying to merge into. At a traffic -light-controlled intersection most of the time you're perpendicular or at an uncomfortable angle.
Then instead think about it like a stop sign at a T intersection. If you're turning left, you have to yield for both lanes. But if you're turning right, you only yield for one.
So you're saying it yourself: it's not like merging. Moreover, at T-intersections there might be some crosswalk, so it's not really true that you yield for one.
lol I've done it again. This was supposed to be a pissed off argument the whole time and I didn't know. I thought you were actually curious about how it works in other countries so I'll stop now.
In the Netherlands it's pretty simple: if the cars have a red light bikes and/or pedestrians have a green light. Turning right on red would be insanely dangerous.
It's a good thing we have roundabouts whenever possible.
Does the blinking yellow light allow drivers to turn onto pedestrians crossing with a green pedestrian light? Cause here that's the only way you can turn in many intersections and that's not exactly safer. You shouldn't put this responsibility on the drivers at all.
Normally blinking yellow just means "traffic light disabled, treat this as a normal intersection"
Turns are regulated by traffic lights with arrows, that's it. Although nowadays they try to replace as many traffic lights as possible with roundabouts.
In the UK a blinking yellow means you can go if there's no pedestrians but you'll only ever get that at a pedestrian crossing on a straight road. Never an intersection. As in, a place where the only reason the light would ever change is a pedestrian pressed the button to request it. Usually then they'll go red for a few seconds, then blinking yellow to allow extra time for slower people to cross.
At intersections you might get green arrows to indicate you can go only in that direction. For example it might allow going straight but not turning because pedestrians are crossing the side road.
There's never a case where red means anything other than you must stop and I've never seen a case where both vehicles and pedestrians would get a green light for the same piece of road at the same time.
Interesting, so blinking yellow obviously means the same everywhere but where these are placed varies a lot. In Greece I've never seen green for both cars and pedestrians either, but there are many cases where pedestrians get green and cars yellow for the same part of road (usually when cars turn right at intersections). From the answers I take it the original comment probably meant cars turning into the path of other cars, not people, which sounds a bit better.