Look left FIRST, then right…

One of the most annoying actions I have seen lately is the carelessness of drivers. I’m not referring to the speeders, the stop-sign runners or even the DUI offenders. I’m also not referring to the youth of today who may seem out of control when groups pile into one car for a joy ride through town. I’m referring to a simple rule that most of us seem to have forgotten: looking both ways before crossing the street!

The key here is “looking.” When you come to an intersection, the Pennsylvania Driving Manual states that you need to make sure the intersection is clear before proceeding. What it doesn’t say is how to do that. While it should be common sense, this simple act is not that simple for some people. The proper etiquette is to look left first, then right, then left. Regardless of which way you are turning (left or right) or going straight, you should always look to your left first because that direction displays the lane of traffic closest to you at that intersection. Once you look left, you need to look to your right – the lane farthest away from you – to check for oncoming traffic. Then, you look left again to double-check that the lane is still clear. After you established that it is safe, that you will not hit any person or another moving vehicle, you can continue on your way.

I cannot tell you how many times I have been nearly run into as a pedestrian, cyclist, or motor vehicle because someone did not look before pulling out at an intersection (usually a stop sign; sometimes out of a driveway). Just to ascertain that I wasn’t a personal target, I conducted an informal observation of my street intersection and found that nearly every vehicle pulled up to the stop sign, looked RIGHT only and then pulled out. Oh, and if they looked left at all, it was as they were pulling out…sometimes in front of other cars, pedestrians, or cyclists.

This is not a phenomenon unique to Pennsylvania roads…I’ve seen it many places in my travels across about half of our states. 

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 4,743 pedestrians were killed in traffic accidents in the United States in 2012 and another 76,000 were injured. The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration stated that the number of pedestrian deaths by motor vehicle represents a 6 percent increase over the prior year. NHTSA revealed that 89 percent of those fatalities occurred in normal weather conditions with a large percentage being children.

It is also important to note that 52 percent of those car-pedestrian accidents were unrelated to alcohol (by either the pedestrian or driver), indicating other reasons for the collisions such as drivers or pedestrians simply not paying attention (i.e. not “looking”).

Whatever happened to looking both ways before you cross the road? We still teach our kindergarteners how to look left, right and then left again before crossing the street; why don’t we retain that through our adulthood? And, why don’t we use that same logic when operating a motor vehicle?

The old adage “look left, then right, then left again” actually is better because when you are crossing a two-way street, the lane closest to you will be coming from your left. So, you should look left first, then check the right side (the lane furthest from you) and re-look to your left before crossing the street.

The same is true if you’re in a car: look left toward the traffic that is in the lane closest to you, then right, then left again.

The point here is safety.

 

Works used for this article:

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2015). Pedestrian safety. Retrieved from http://www.cdc.gov/Motorvehiclesafety/Pedestrian_safety/

National Highway Transportation Safety Administration. (2014). Traffic Safety Facts 2012 Data. Retrieved from http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/811888.pdf.