*2013 Update* After I left the country, New Zealand changed their traffic laws so that the right of way turning now makes sense. This post reflects how NZ law USED to be.
New Zealand has a very quirky traffic law. In fact, it’s the only place in the world that has this type of law, and there is a reason for it: It’s stupid.
The law I’m talking about is concerning what happens with who has ‘Right of way’ when turning on a road without the aid of stoplights/stopsigns. I’ll give an example in North America of what normally happens.
Two cars approach a McDonald’s from opposite directions and want to turn into the parking lot. The car making the right hand turn gets right of way and turns first. The car making a left hand turn has to wait for all traffic to clear before proceeding to make their turn. Nice, safe and makes sense to all involved.
This isn’t how things work in New Zealand.
I’m going to reverse driving sides from the NZ norm so it matches North American standards. So now, according to New Zealand law, when the two cars approach the McDonald’s, the car making the easy right hand turn must STOP and give way to the left turning vehicle. Make sense? It shouldn’t, it’s pretty darn backwards.
Now let’s add yet another complexity – crossing more than one lane of traffic! Say this McDonald’s is in a city with a couple of lanes of traffic now in both directions. Now what happens? Well, that depends. Assuming only the same two (red/green) cars are present, the same right of way applies as before – the red car making the longer left hand turn has right of way, and the right hand turning green car must stop and wait before making their turn. However, if there is another car in the lane beside the green car, then the green car can go ahead and make their turn – the red car has to wait for other traffic to clear first (blue has right of way to continue going straight at all times). But that assumes the red car doesn’t gun it and try to make the turn before blue approaches.
I’ve gotten the ‘drive car on the left’ part of things down, and the whole roundabouts thing has been figured out as well. But this rule is giving me trouble so far (honked at once) – the circumstances don’t happen very often, and I’m used to simply making the easy turn without bothering to check what opposite direction traffic is doing – because it DOESN’T MAKE SENSE otherwise! Thankfully, no accidents, yet. But even New Zealand’s largest insurance company agrees with me. It won’t change in the year I’m here, but the rule is absolutely baffling and really should be scrapped.
Don’t forget that you have right turn on red back at home. Also even in North America, vehicles turning right from a slip lane do give way to anything leaving the intersection including left turning vehicles, though the merging angle is closer to 90 degrees in this case. Unlike you, I live in a country (near NZ) which also drives on the left, so I am not going to reverse driving sides. As long as everyone actually adhered to the rules, the problems you describe would not arise. The basic rule you showed in your diagram, with directions reversed is that those taking left turns may turn provided that straight ahead traffic can maintain course and speed. as you linked to the AA article, let me show you a response to that article, by a local driver who says that many other local drivers also don’t stop for amber lights or indicate before they turn.
However, this rule does mean that left (curb) turning drivers need to rely on sideward glances to check for right turning vehicles, pedestrians and to use side mirrors, and so may be difficult for those with peripheral vision impairment and especially one-eyed people, please refer to New Zealand’s medical standards for driving.
Indeed we have right on red, but only in some parts of Canada and the US. It’s a regional thing. I could do with standardization in that respect, and I actually like that NZ doesn’t allow it. While from a slip lane we do give way to ALL traffic (not just left turning), it is also signed as such – yield or stop signs are present. The left turning traffic will already be part of the merged traffic by that time they reach the slip lane anyways, so that isn’t really an argument for checking opposite lane turning traffic. My problem wasn’t with stoplight situations anyways; it was much more during free-flowing traffic turning into a contested drive.
Sure, if everyone adhered to the rules there wouldn’t be a problem. The thing is, we are human, and we make mistakes. And then you add in tourists, learning drivers, poor weather, and the other variables that exist any time you get behind the wheel of a car and you can only do your best, you can’t be perfect. I take it you have never had a near miss that was your fault? Because if you’ve driven for long, I find that hard to believe. EVERYONE makes mistakes. The reason we don’t have many accidents is that the other drives will spot them and make the appropriate adjustments.
Not stopping for an amber signal and not signalling are universal problems for driving, not just specific to NZ. I’ve seen that everywhere I’ve visited. Sure, you are shifting the problem of waiting to the opposite side of the road now – but you are shifting it to a side that already has to make a full check before turning. You ARE NOT adding more work to the driver making a right hand turn, you are decreasing the work done by the left hand turn driver (as miniscule as it may be). And the blog mentions the amount of concentration that those have to exert when coming here and learning a reverse world – I can attest to that. Adding in a rule that exists ONLY in New Zealand, for no real reason that anyone can explain other than it has been here for a while, only exacerbates difficulties. My issue in learning this right of way rule is that it doesn’t come up often. You get used to driving on the left hand side of the road within a few days of driving. You only have to deal with the right of way rule once in a while; I know my first time that I can recall wasn’t for at least 2 weeks of driving. It’s MUCH less common, thus harder to re-learn due to the lack of reinforcement while driving. You can tell a person to beware of the rule, but out on the road you learn through practice, not through theory. If you don’t see the situation often, mistakes might be made during the first couple.
The rest of your comment veers from decent if flawed argument to being an asshole, I’ll just leave it at this – When you are the only person in a group doing something different from the rest, you may be a pioneer and ahead of the group or you may be stuck in the past and still haven’t learnt what everyone else already knows. Where do you think NZ sits being the only one with this rule?
“Indeed we have right on red, but only in some parts of Canada and the US. It’s a regional thing.”
I’ve read that it is permitted everywhere in US except in New York city (where it is only permitted where signed), everywhere in Canada except the Isle of Montreal and (in both countries) at intersections where a sign prohibits it.
“Sure, if everyone adhered to the rules there wouldn’t be a problem. The thing is, we are human, and we make mistakes. And then you add in tourists, learning drivers, poor weather, and the other variables that exist any time you get behind the wheel of a car and you can only do your best, you can’t be perfect.”
The visually impaired would be another issue, as many of them drive, mostly for personal/non-commercial use.
“Not stopping for an amber signal and not signalling are universal problems for driving, not just specific to NZ. I’ve seen that everywhere I’ve visited.”
As are those rules themselves.
“And the blog mentions the amount of concentration that those have to exert when coming here and learning a reverse world – I can attest to that. Adding in a rule that exists ONLY in New Zealand, for no real reason that anyone can explain other than it has been here for a while, only exacerbates difficulties. ”
New Zealand does not share land borders with any other country. In your own country you drive on the other side, so you are dealing with much bigger differences anyway. Let’s consider the number of tourists you have each year and only a quarter of foreign visitors (30% of those from the UK and Australia) use rental cars, and unfamiliar with local road rules was not in Annual Statistics 2007 report on motor vehicle crashes in New Zealand, though such accidents might well be listed as faling to give way or stop which itself was first equal (with ‘loss of control’) in injury crash causes, being noted in 23% of those incidents. There was no mention of how many of those were the specific rule in question. The author of the blog entry I linked to and the No right turn blog, believe that many drivers in his home and native country have trouble with all give way rules. He says that the people of his country are simply bad drivers on average. He says that those who migrate there have to adapt anyway.
But what if you are the only tourist on the road and you are the one who (nearly) runs into him, is it going to be any less serious?
“I’ll just leave it at this – When you are the only person in a group doing something different from the rest, you may be a pioneer and ahead of the group or you may be stuck in the past and still haven’t learnt what everyone else already knows. Where do you think NZ sits being the only one with this rule?”
New Zealand introduced it back in 1977, the right turn before left turn rule originated here in Victoria. According to the legend, we had the rule because of Melbourne’s trams, I’m sure we had another initial reasoning but that’s often mentioned. We were the only state with this rule and we share land borders with New South Wales and South Australia, also the rule encouraged people to use the outside lane. We changed the rule on the 28 of Febuary 1993 after many months warning, the accident rate dropped immediately after the rule change. Again visual disabilities were not explicity mentioned but our primary reason for changing the rules was to reduce accidents involving turning vehicles. I don’t know what portion involved visually impaired drivers, but let’s suppose that any otherwise good drivers (other than interstate visitors) who didn’t observe this rule either had vision problems or visual procesing problems.
Why are such impairments relevant? While the current give way rule does share the workload by making both drivers aware of their surroundings it does mean the following. When turning across traffic one is at a vantage point where one can see oncoming traffic by looking (almost) straight ahead. But the vantage point of those turning left means they need to look more rightward to check for opposing traffic and look in the mirror. Could they just turn their head to do that? What about pedestrians crossing the side street? So there may be times when left turining drivers need to rely on sideward glances from both eyes. Here is New Zealand’s vision standards, if we let people drive they need to be qualified and catered for. If those turning left are only requried to give way to the pedestrians crossing the side street, they can turn their heads if unable to rely on sideward glances.
It gets rockier at uncontrolled intesections. In New Zealand, at uncontrolled four way intersections, those going straight give way the straight ahead on the right. At any uncontrolled intersection, T or four way, those turning give way to straight ahead traffic and all traffic approaching from the right.
Here in Australia, most unsignalled intersections other than roundabouts distinguish between the major and minor roads. At an uncontrolled T intersection, the continuing road is the major road. So let’s consider a four-way sign controlled intersection. If turing right from the major to the minor road, just check for traffic coming towards you and pedestrians on the far side of the intersection, you are not requried to give way to the vehicle coming towards you if you recognise the other driver’s intention to turn right also. If turing left onto the minor road, check for pedestrians crossing the minor road and then turn. Now consider traffic on the minor road, when turning left check for vehicles approaching from your right and pedestrians crossing the major road. You are not required to give way to any cross street traffic if you recognise the other driver’s intention to turn. If going straight through, you check for pedestrians crossing in front of you (especially at stop signs) and cross traffic, you are not requried to give way to a vehicle on your right if you recognise the other driver’s intention to turn left. If turning right onto the major road, only then do you need to check for everything within 180 degrees of you, except pedestrians on your left crossing the major road. In this case you are not requried to give way to any cross traffic if you recognise the other driver’s intention to turn left.
At uncontrolled four-way intersection, our rule is opposite to the North American rule in mirror image form.* Whether going straight or turing either way, you check you anything coming from your right, checking whether they are turning left, and for traffic coming towards you, to which vehicles on your right are in turn requried to give way, and check whether they too are turning left.
*except that over there those approaching the intersection yield to those already in it.
so this law has been changed now to be standard with everyone else. last year