Picture for me a specific moment of panic on the road that many of us have experienced over the course of our lives. You’re in your car, stopped at a red light. You see a break in traffic, and your foot is ready on the gas. But as you start to move forward, eager to hit the gap, at the last moment you see a mother pushing a stroller walking with two kids starting to step out to cross the street. You swerve, just missing them, and breathe a sigh of relief. That could have been a lot worse.
The conversation around banning right turns on red is reaching a boiling point in Ottawa this summer. As we aim to make the city (and in the case of the purview of this site, especially the suburbs) more traversable for people outside their cars, the issue of safety over travel time is certainly a flashpoint here too. We see headlines from every part of the city about life-changing injuries and deaths, seeming to make the news every week. The core of the problem isn’t the act of making an individual right turn when safe to do so; it’s that the legality of the turn itself is a systemic cause of conflict.
The path in this case was not as clear as the law assumes, and you’re caught in a moment of indecision that was very nearly tragic. That legal right to turn on red, which is encouraged ‘when safe’ across Ottawa, is a direct signal that road infrastructure was not built as part of a safe, walkable community—it was built for unimpeded car movement. This expectation of a seamless, unimpeded right turn is not only a design flaw for a multi-modal transportation network, but, as a new study by the CAA confirms, it is demonstrably making our streets less safe.
This study by the CAA and Miovision utilized cameras and AI to monitor 20 Canadian intersections and found an average of more than one potentially fatal near-miss per day per intersection. The data provides a powerful and unflinching look at the dangers we face. It found that the most common near-misses involved vehicles making right turns, in fact, close calls happened on right turns in 55% of the studied pedestrian interactions and in 50% of those with cyclists. The data confirms what many cyclists and pedestrians have long known: our streets, and the rules that govern them, are designed with a systemic bias against their safety.
The danger of right turns on red is further compounded by the rise of larger vehicles. These vehicles, including SUVs and pickup trucks, have larger blind spots, which make it significantly more difficult for a driver to see a pedestrian or cyclist who is approaching the intersection to their right. When a policy encourages a maneuver that is already statistically responsible for the majority of near-misses, and you pair it with a vehicle that has an inherent design flaw for that exact maneuver, you create a perfect storm for a collision.
This isn’t about taking away a minor convenience; it’s about correcting a deeply flawed system that prioritizes vehicle travel time over safety. The goal of a walkable communities isn’t to force people out of their vehicles but to give them good, safe alternatives to driving. The debate over banning right turns on red is, therefore, a test of our values. Are we willing to embrace a policy that might add a few seconds to a car trip if it means we can build a community where our children can walk and cycle without fear a driver’s split-second decision out of convenience could change or end their life in an instant?
If a person is waiting to turn right on a red light and feels frustrated, believing the wait to be “for no reason,” that is a clear symptom of poor intersection design and light timing. It’s a signal that the infrastructure was built on the outdated assumption that its only purpose is to move as many vehicles through as quickly as possible. The CAA’s “Safe Systems Approach” and recommendations for design changes, such as having walk signals start before vehicle green lights, offer a direct solution to this problem. When intersections are properly designed to accommodate all road users safely, the frustration of an “unnecessary” wait disappears, because the reason for the wait—safety—becomes clear to everyone.
The next time you’re stopped at a red light, with a clear path to turn right, remember this feeling of frustration. See it as a signal, but not to just hit the gas and make your right turn. See it as a sign that our infrastructure is still designed for car travel with maximum efficiency for drivers, something new transportation policy is trying to work past. Long-term, the solution isn’t just to change the rules to accommodate a flawed street design, but to fix the flawed design so that the rule doesn’t feel punitive. That’s how we begin the work of transforming the city from a place you live with to a community you live in.
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