Gauche
Will someone please teach Michigan drivers how to make a left-hand turn at an intersection?
As reference for everyone in every other state, and every other country, Michigan uniquely has a traffic tactic for left-hand turns called, of course, a Michigan left. Instead of turning left at the intersection, it requires you to go through the intersection and make a U-turn at some distance forward, then return to the intersection in order to make a right-hand turn.
I have never seen the data which evaluates the improved safety of this approach, although a young man who had taken at least 3 transportation classes once yelled at me that it was much better, so it must be. He was, however, unable to explain why this much better approach hadn’t consequently been widely adopted. It seems to me that it relies on low traffic volumes and is inefficient in that it requires traveling beyond the turning point, includes a high conflict U-turn, and has no direct controls: although the signal downline does help, it doesn’t fully choke oncoming traffic because of right-on-red turns. Plus, not all “turn-arounds” have a designated lane or signal, like in this diagram, so in many cases, the flow of traffic in the inside lane is halted, past the intersection. This creates a bottleneck both at the intersection and potentially beyond it, where not expected. But in its most embellished build-out, it looks like Fig 1:
Fig 1. The infamous Michigan “left”
In some cases, especially around highway ramps, the U-turn is placed directly before the actual intersection, and that looks like Fig 2:
Fig 2. TX turn-around, used mostly at hwy exchanges
This is called a Texas turn-around, so perhaps some of you have seen this little trick before. I hadn’t seen it in any state before I moved to Michigan. I can tell you that I am not alone in having come the wrong way on one of those inside turn-around lanes, because in installation, they are not nearly as pronounced a curve as indicated in this schematic.
The last type of left-hand turn one sees here, though less common and which has other elements of confusion, are the lefts around a median. To call these medians is a little misleading for the scale many are used to: these are more akin to divided highway layouts, even though they may be found on boulevards with 25mph limits. These require cars to pull into a liminal space – where there’s a second stop light (this is what confuses drivers new to the arrangement – do you wait for this light to turn green to complete your turn? No, it’s treated as a stop sign, but you can see why there’s a question) – from where they turn left. It looks like Fig 3:
Fig 3. In median left turns, the car has to pull up to the lane into which it wants to turn.
There is one intersection in Detroit, at Woodward and MLK/Mack, which demonstrates the point. It is a relatively busy intersection, near the hospital, Whole Foods and Starbucks. Frequently, drivers attempting to turn left at the intersection – which is allowed, even though there is also a Michgian left build-out – use what they know. Here, they use the median left turn strategy. But what works because of the 30-50’ span of median and low traffic volumes does not work at an ordinary intersection, and so cars create a situation where they actually block each other from making a left.
The resulting clown car of traffic looks like Fig 4:
Fig 4. Intersectional confusion – a choreography with no tune
Now, this has been illustrated with only two car colors to clearly show the trajectory; when there is only one car on each side, this approach is navigable, because timing is on your side. But when there are, in fact, a line of cars – which occurs regularly – this circular blockade does form and no one seems to know that it shouldn’t, or what to do about it. You can see how this jacks up traffic flow in several ways.
Please, note, Michiganders, that if you haven’t had the opportunity to travel elsewhere to know how this normally works, this is not how it normally works. Because, as you see for yourself, it does not work.
This is what left-hand turns at an intersection look like (below, Fig 5). The cars turn shy of the midpoint of the intersection, into the inner lane. Turning into the inner lane is important, since it avoids conflict with right-on-red turns into the outside lane.
Fig 5. Please refer to your drivers’ ed manual
And although this is certainly on the driver test for Michigan, and therefore you should already know this, I understand how it’s rare and you may have forgotten or be unsure how to act at an intersection. We can put some of the blame on the City of Detroit, who absolutely should stripe areas which are more prone to confusion or have observable issues – as this intersection most certainly does. Please: put your phone, latte and Whole Foods bag aside and make the turn as you should.
More importantly, stop giving those of us who understand traffic patterns dirty looks, as though we’ve made the error.
I’m coming for the Michigan at Roosevelt Park clustermess, next.