As many of you know I am in NYC right now and I was surprised to see Bike Snob highlight an intersection that is near my new apartment as "unsafe." While by New York City standards this is a messed up intersection but it’s far safer then most Maryland intersections I’ve walked as a pedestrian in Maryland.
Why is that? The number one reason is there is no right-on-red here. There are (usually) no cars blocking the crosswalk and 99.9% of the cars stop for you when you start to cross. No Maryland style honking or "I’ll run your foot over if you don’t let me hurry past you." or other aggressive driver moves.
Yet traditionally Maryland does not eliminate right-on-red to improve safety for pedestrians. And further there is no benefit for the motorized transportation network as a whole in allowing right-on-red (unless there are a lot of people travelling in clockwise circles) as any benefit at one light gets canceled when you wait at the next light and then there is the other people downstream from the right-on-red trying to pull out/in to driveways that now have to wait for traffic traveling at lower density then queued traffic (they have to wait longer for fewer cars.)
All right-on-red does is exasperate impatience and encourage more jackrabbit starts. Yet Maryland says we "need" to keep right-on-red while our pedestrian fatality rate is refusing to go down while our other crash stats are.
.
https://bikesnobnyc.blogspot.com/2011/03/bsnyc-friday-fun-quiz.htmloldId.20110322171239729
Biking in Baltimore