"No Left Turn" =/= Left Turn Okay Just For You

[Mnemjian]

I live right next to a busy street, which crosses my not-so-busy street at a big intersection, kind of like this: _|_ (the bottom line would be the busy street). This busy street is old so is only 4 lanes wide. There are no left turns allowed onto my street for two reasons:
1) because it would block up traffic extremely bad during rush hour
2) because it's really hard to see oncoming traffic, and the speed limit is 35 mph (so people are going about 45-50)
There's a big sign that says "No Left Turn" and there's even an arrow for illiterate people! Unfortunately, it doesn't work. I think it's mainly because if you do need to make a left turn, you have to go TWO WHOLE BLOCKS farther up, because the next street is one way only. Oh noes!

Well, of course there are a few special little snowflakes who just can't bear the thought of having to drive up two more blocks to make a left turn (or just can't read?). Surprisingly often our household is treated to the sound of squealing tires, breaking glass, and crashing hunks of metal. Yes, it is the left-turning cars getting hit by oncoming traffic. Thankfully nobody has been seriously injured in a long time as far as I know. I'm just surprised how often it happens. But seriously, they don't put those signs up just to annoy you....

[Andara Bledin]

I get this all the time if I take one of the potential routes home.

Although in my case there are four streets in a row that are no left turn during afternoon rush hours (3pm-6pm), but that doesn't stop random people from deciding that they don't want to wait two or three signals to get to the next legal left turn.

Personally, I think they should just take the left turn lanes out entirely and make everybody drive around all the time. The most you could ever possibly have to go out of your way (if you lived on the corner of the first street and had to go all the way around) would be less than a mile.

^-.-^

[smileyeagle1021]

Oh, I see this all the time... except usually it's u-turns. The road leading up to my humble abode ave intersects State St. It's at the end of just over an 8th of a mile of distance where left hand turns aren't possible... and people just love to do u-turns there, thus blocking the high volume of traffic of people trying to turn onto ave or turn left off of ave. There is (or at least used to be, they may have taken it down and just given up) saying no u-turns, yet every day I see at least one person u-turn in front of me while I'm waiting to turn.

Oh, in downtown left hand turns are permitted across TRAX only at approved intersection with left hand turn signals... you can see where this is going...

[Kogarashi]

I see this occasionally at the rear access to the Sam's Club lot around here. It looks something like the attached diagram below.

The lot access is Y-shaped. The left branch of the Y is entering traffic only, and the right branch is exiting traffic only, meaning the far lane has no legal access to the lot from this direction, and has signs proclaiming this. Instead, you drive a little further to the left in the diagram and go down a very steep hill to a major (4+ lanes) road, where you can turn left and take the next left with a light into the lot via the main entrance.

The reasons for the lack of access to the far lane should be obvious, but here they are anyway (near as I can tell): with the very steep hill right there, it's just not safe for cars to keep crossing the lane of traffic going right. The cars coming up the hill can't see anyone at the lot access until they're almost on top of them. I can vouch for this. I drive a rather tall vehicle, and still can't see most cars waiting to pull out until I'm almost to them.

Yet I have seen several cars actually make a left turn into the rear access, via either branch of the Y, and once even saw a car pull out of the lot via the incoming traffic lane.

[ADoyle90815]

A variation of that is blocking the entire lane when waiting to make a left turn. Some asshat did that yesterday, to the point where my boyfriend who was driving, had to almost go into the opposing traffic lane just to get around that car.