Right Turn on Red Was a 1975 Gas-Saving Scheme. The Savings Expired. The Deaths Didn't.

Every time you roll through a red light to turn right, you are executing federal energy policy from the Ford administration, and I mean energy policy, not traffic policy. In the 1980s, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety measured what that policy cost pedestrians: permitting right turns on red increased pedestrian crashes by 60 percent, and bicycle crashes by 100 percent.^[1] The arithmetic is ugly, and it knows it.

Rewind to 1973. OPEC embargoes oil, gas lines snake around blocks, and Congress decides the nation is idling too much at red lights. The Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975 ties states' eligibility for federal energy assistance to allowing right turn on red "to the maximum extent practicable consistent with safety."^[2] Thirteen states allowed it in 1972. By 1980, nearly all of them did, with exactly one holdout that matters: New York City, which never allowed it and still doesn't.^[3]

Was it worth it? Virginia ran the numbers in 1977 and found right turn on red saved about 3.6 million gallons of fuel statewide that year, against 75 crashes, mostly fender-benders.^[4] During rationing, that trade looked brilliant. Then researchers looked at the bodies, and a 1982 study found pedestrian conflicts with right-turning vehicles jumped 57 percent in Ohio and 107 percent in Wisconsin after legalization, with cyclist conflicts up 80 and 72 percent respectively.^[5] NHTSA's 1995 national count found about 84 people a year dying in right-on-red crashes, 44 percent of them pedestrians and another 10 percent bicyclists, with injuries running at 100 times the fatality rate.^[1]

That was the fleet of 1995. This is the fleet of 2026, and it is taller. IIHS found the odds of a pedestrian being killed when struck by a right-turning vehicle are 89 percent higher for pickups and 63 percent higher for SUVs than for cars, thanks to blind spots and blunt front ends.^[6] Light trucks were roughly 40 percent of new-vehicle sales in the mid-1990s; today they're roughly 80 percent. Do the weighting on a simple index where a striking car scores 1.0: the mid-90s mix, roughly 60 percent car and 40 percent light truck at ~1.75x lethality, scores 1.30; today’s mix, roughly 20/80, scores 1.60. That is a 23 percent rise in expected lethality per pedestrian strike, under the same 1975 law but against deadlier cars. Meanwhile the original benefit has quietly expired: millions of new cars shut their own engines off at red lights, and EVs burn essentially nothing while they wait. Nobody repealed the mandate; it simply outlived its excuse.

Cities have noticed, and Atlanta's city council banned right turns on red across Downtown, Midtown, and Castleberry Hill, effective 2026, after advocates pointed to Washington D.C.'s ban producing, in their words, really good safety results.^[7] Nashville's council filed its own ban in July 2026, with 28 pedestrians already dead on its roads this year; the bill passed its first reading and is being narrowed to school zones and downtown corridors.^[8] The federal data backs the experiment: the FHWA's crash-modification clearinghouse puts the effect of prohibiting right turns at urban intersections at a 37.5 percent reduction in all right-turn crashes and about a 29 percent reduction in vehicle-pedestrian right-turn crashes, rising to 50 percent where foot traffic is heavy.^[9]

Before you start the parade, hear the other side at full volume. Right-on-red deaths were always a small slice of pedestrian fatalities, and there has been no national count since 1995, so today's toll is extrapolated, not measured. Bans cost real things: more idling for the 250 million combustion vehicles still on the road, slower buses, gummed-up delivery routes. Enforcement lands hardest on lower-income drivers who have no choice but to drive to work, a warning the Fines and Fees Justice Center has raised explicitly.^[10] Compliance is genuinely terrible: 10 to 20 percent of drivers ignore existing no-turn-on-red signs, which can make pedestrians less safe by inflating their confidence.^[11] And modern automatic emergency braking specifically targets the low-speed intersection conflicts this maneuver creates. The honest version is that right turn on red is a real but second-order hazard, and the cities banning it are buying pedestrian comfort alongside body-count reduction.

Still. A federal energy law from the age of gas rationing dictates how you behave at every red light in America, half a century after the embargo ended, and the provision that forced it on the states is still on the books.^[5] Congress bought this maneuver with gasoline, the gasoline savings are gone, and what remains is a convenience for drivers, paid for by the people crossing in front of them, one intersection at a time, until the cities finish repealing it block by block.

What to do with this: pedestrians, know that the driver waiting to turn right is looking left for a gap in traffic, not at you, so make eye contact before you step in front of a car that is legally allowed to roll through your crosswalk. Drivers, the law requires a full stop first in every state, and the crosswalk to your right has a walk signal at the same moment you have a red. If your city council takes up a ban, the number that matters is 29 percent, and the fine print is that signs alone don't cut it: pair them with leading pedestrian intervals, a few seconds of walk time before the green, or non-compliance eats the gains.^[9][11]