There is no law that gives you general license to routinely break traffic rules on your perception of safety. Sorry bout that.

Jeez that’s so scary :(

People don't expect anyone to jump the light. I have no idea why you think it's safer for you to break traffic laws while being sanctimonious at everyone.

Yeah I'm glad we're improving our infrastructure to make things safer. Still a ways to go though and I wish we'd spend more on our public transit infrastructure to meet the goal of getting the ever increasing number of cars off the road.

Well, in other parts of the world that isn’t allowed. Pedestrian cycles are separate from car cycles. But in the US we place cars above everything, and so we have this system.

Fair enough. There are people trying to get it on the books but MA has a very car obsessed culture. I always stop and stay stopped at red lights because I don’t want to be “that cyclist”, but that is really the only reason. I have frequently had to deal with very unsafe scenarios (an uber car blocking the bike lane) that would have been much safer if I had been able to get out ahead of the stopped cars.

I believe MA law also empowers cyclists to do what they need to do to preserve their safety — and frequently getting out ahead of parked cars to get around an obstacle i.e. an uber car parked in the bike lane, makes things safer for everyone.

Turning right on red is incredibly dangerous and allowing it to be normalized into society should never have been done. You will be hard pressed to find a person who frequently walks around the city who would disagree with this.

My whole family was almost hit by an SUV that came to a perfunctory rolling stop and then immediately gunned the right turn without looking, while we were already in the middle of the crosswalk.

Inexcusable then and now. All about racial segregation without saying it out loud, and there is a lot of historical records available that prove this. Cambridge should be 2-3 family zoned by right.

They are plowed, as is the linear park and other designated bike commuter ways.

Because every last square foot of public land has to be used for cars, and if you try to re-allocate that space you’re evil. I honestly think the only reason we still have sidewalks after the 60-70s is because car drivers still had to walk a few dozen feet from their parking spot to the store/house.

If cars were operating in a way that was safe for pedestrians, in some sort of utopia where everyone behaves nicely, it would likely congest the roads just as much as requiring no turn on red. The “lack” of congestion is caused by allowing cars to do things that are statistically proven to be unsafe for pedestrians.

Probably because these accidents happen all over the city and not just at dangerous/busy intersections.

“I would imagine”

The city provided statistics in their presentation demonstrating reductions in accidents following posting no turn on red signs, and an increase in compliance (not turning into pedestrians) following the signs being posted.

Please. My whole family was almost run over by a guy who turned right on red into us after coming to a stop, after we were already in a crosswalk. Car drivers are fundamentally incapable of safely coexisting with the city.

Not what the law currently says, sure. My safety trumps the law though.

Not what drivers expect? Only if you're not following the spirit of an Idaho Stop. At a stop sign, you're supposed to stop and only proceed if and when it's safe to do so. Going out in front of moving cars wouldn't be safe, so you shouldn't do that, even if it's legal.

Saying people accept it is a bit extreme. 40,000 people die every year in the US and over 1 million are sent to the hospital. My mom was rear ended (she was in a car) over a decade ago by a car going 30mph and had neck pain that lasts to this day from the whiplash.

Their convenience inside a dense city like Cambridge is questionable at best.

Finally, I appreciate that you are proposing a solution, but I don’t see any plausible way that is going to happen. Everything in our society follows a bell curve — and driving is no different. There is always going to be shitty drivers and in a city that means there are hundreds or thousands of shitty drivers.

Let’s just bypass these incremental safety obsessed laws and just mandate than no one be allowed to leave the house without their bubble wrap suit and safety helmet.

More surveillance tech? No thanks.

In fact this is already the case. There are hardly any intersections where it's not already posted, as far as I've seen.

That's not what the law currently says though, and not what drivers expect.

I don't smoke weed in public parks bro.

You trust drivers to always obey “no turn on red” signs but not to check before they turn?

Pedestrians and drivers still need to look, if right on red is allowed or not.

That’s fine, but doesn’t change the fact that right on red doesn’t make me feel safe and just because we’ve always done it doesn’t mean we should always do it.

That’s doesn’t change with a no turn on red sign. People do it anyways and often lights are not timed to account for this. We trust drivers to drive 65/70 mph next to each other stacked 4 across on a highway, we’ve been turning right on red here for decades and the rate of accidents isn’t very high from specifically this I would imagine. I pretty much never see right on red drivers not stop or roll down to an incredibly slow roll while checking.