welcome to driving school wa tutorials in this short video i'm going to demonstrate how to turn
safely at a major intersection without the green arrow so i'm talking about the intersection where
there's a green light and potentially a green arrow that changes to red or stays red and then at
some point the red arrow drops and you've got the single green light where you've got to give way
to the opposite direction okay like in this in this drawing here in a situation
where there's a vehicle in front of you i'm going to incorporate the uh
the real situations where i'm driving in the car so you have better visuals and understanding
how to do this properly and safely so if there's a vehicle in front of you waiting and for example
if the green arrow drops and there's a single green light when this car in front assuming
that you are the car the white car with the blue stripes on it when the red car moves in the middle
allowing the traffic from opposite direction to get through you're not supposed to cross
the line and wait here until this vehicle completely clears okay so make sure you can fit
past before you commit over to pass inside of the intersection and get get through okay so just to
recap so in a situation like i just showed you if the red arrow drops and you've got a
single green light so when there's a vehicle in front of you and the red arrow disappears
you must strictly wait behind a solid white line before that vehicle completely clears under no
circumstances don't risk getting stranded in the middle of the intersection in the middle of the
path of potentially fast oncoming traffic okay that's extremely important so do not make that
error so when the vehicle in front of you lines up waiting for the cars coming through from the
opposite direction okay so they'd be here in the middle so make sure that when this one commits
forward you've got to make sure they clear the intersection before you cross the line and you
know providing that there's no one else to give way to from the opposite direction so you would be
able to proceed okay very important to remember in a different scenario where there's traffic turning
okay so if we've got traffic turning from the opposite direction from the turning lane okay and
if you're trying to turn where there's seemingly no cars coming straight through from the opposite
direction we've got to be careful if this vehicle is obstructing our view so you've got to
cautiously move forward and make sure that there's no one coming through in order to proceed
safely and turn right so you've got to understand that as you can see here in the real footage in a
situation where seemingly we don't have traffic to give way to from the opposite direction still we
don't have a great view because it's obstructed by the cars turning from the opposite direction
so move forward as far as you possibly can without cutting through into the opposite direction path
so from there okay and now it's not an option to sit there and wait until the light changes
so that's not an option so you've got to move forward some say by a length of a car but it
will depend on the size of the intersection so if it's really lengthy you know intersection between
the two sides sometimes you might need to move forward even by two and you know sometimes even
two and a half lengths depending on the size of the intersection like i said so this painted
white square it's usually white as you can see in the footage i just showed you a moment ago
so this painted square is sort of a guide where we could get up to so we can block the opposite
direction turning lane but we can't cut into the um you know straight going lanes because if
someone's coming through and you're standing there they might collide with you obviously so just just
ensure that that's the case and how you do it all right in a situation where there's a green arrow
if most of the traffic gets through and at some point the uh green arrow changes you would have
to wait until it disappears so if the most of the traffic has proceeded and while you were on
the way towards the intersection if it changes to the red arrow you would have to wait until the red
arrow changes or until it disappears okay when it does you've got to understand you got to give way
to all the traffic going straight okay before you can commit okay and then once everything is clear
you can then peacefully and safely proceed okay so that's very important so
in this real situation here when we don't manage to catch the green arrow
and have to wait you have to wait until the arrow drops
if you're the first car after the arrow drops you can commit forward up to the white painted square
just ensuring that you're not cutting into the opposite direction that's going straight ahead
and then proceed when it's safe to do so so you've got to remember that and you've got to go through
these situations in order to know how to handle them every time you come across them often we
see licensed drivers who don't understand this particular situation and if they've got a single
green light without an arrow they would sit there and wait until the light changes but the problem
is there are lights out there without the arrow at all usually you'd see these type of traffic lights
without the green arrow or red arrow at all where there's no high volume of traffic how would you
turn then how would you you know you've got to understand that you know if you've got a green
light you really just need to give way to people from the opposite direction and then proceed when
it's safe to do so unfortunately governments fund modifying intersections because drivers are not
capable of understanding and executing some of the simple things that we should all really know
if we have driver's licence we should know how to handle this okay and i personally believe
if you can't do this safely you shouldn't get your licence i'm sorry but that's how i feel
about it i witnessed so many horrible accidents and this is something that can easily be avoided
and most of the times it's human error never a mechanical error one of the most commonly asked
questions is what do you do if the light changes while you're waiting okay so for example
you got in the middle and you're waiting for the traffic to come through but there's so many
cars from the opposite direction coming through all the time and at some point
light changes to amber and then to the red okay so what you would do while he's standing there
you would make judgment and you would assess if the traffic is slowing down or speeding
up to get through when you get some reasonable experience in these situations it's going to be
effortless to understand if the traffic is speeding up and proceeding or slowing down
if you see that they're speeding up to get through just wait so even if you go partially
through the red light that's not a problem okay because there is a buffer gap about two to three
seconds between the time the light changes that side and that side light changes to amber and red
before that side these ones get green light okay so one more thing that you got to understand
when your traffic lights that you that you're looking at when they start to change the opposite
direction traffic lights change at exactly the same time okay there are no exceptions so you've
got to have that understanding you've got to practice on these intersections a lot with your
instructors and your private supervisors providing that you're at the level where you can respond
properly to the verbal instructions thank you for watching and i'll see you in the next video