The Mast-Head: No Left Turns

A lot of the problems on the roads hereabouts could be solved if left turns were outlawed. This notion comes from a member of the Star staff who shall remain nameless and who also suggested with some seriousness that landscaping should be banned.  

A landscaping ban, while an intriguing approach to traffic tie-ups, leaf-blower noise, and huge equipment-filled trailers left in roadways, is a long shot. Eliminating lefts, on the other hand, could really result in something good.

I’d put U-turns in the category of ban-able lefts, especially between May and October. This season has seemed to be the summer of the U, with 9 out of the 10 dangerous motor-vehicle interactions I have been involved in having to do with someone attempting to turn around and drive in the other direction.

Just Monday on my way to Sag Harbor on 114 at around 2 p.m., a woman driving a blue Subaru suddenly whipped around from the right shoulder, causing the small car in front of me to brake suddenly to avoid a T-bone collision. In Sag Harbor itself the evening before that, a man driving a Toyota pickup backed into a driveway on Garden Street, then lurched forward in an opposite direction, yes, making a left without noticing that I was approaching from his right. My pounding on the horn seemed all that avoided a crash.

People are weird this time of the year, even people you know. Headed home later through Sag Harbor after the Garden Street incident, I was baffled to see a small knot of people standing smack in the middle of West Water Street opposite the Beacon restaurant. They did not so much as twitch as I drove into the opposite lane to avoid them, noticing as I passed that the ringleader was a friend who is an architect apparently pontificating about some aspect of the nearby streetscape.

But back to lefts and U-turns. According to New York City statistics, left-turn crashes take place about three times as often as those during right turns. Nationwide, lefts account for about 53 percent of all accidents, according to a federal study. Here, drunken driving and deer account for their share of collisions, but, in a recent town police report, drivers making lefts were involved in every single one of the crashes with significant injuries. 

Not making lefts is impractical, but if more drivers avoided them at major intersections, our roads would be much safer. I think of Stephen Hand’s Path, where a newly timed stoplight at Route 114 is causing long backups. Right here by the East Hampton Library, drivers making lefts from Buell Lane onto Main Street create no end of trouble. Banning lefts may be an idea whose time has come, at least in East Hampton between now and the first Monday in September.