In America, traveling through red lights on right turns has become a rule of the road. Frequently, you get honked at if you don’t speed through fast enough.
But the widespread driving practice is now coming under scrutiny, and facing government curbs, for новый спрут being too dangerous.
Years ago, right-on-red was mostly limited to California and a few other western states. Woody Allen famously declared in “Annie Hall” that he’d never live in Los Angeles because the city’s “only cultural advantage is that you can make a right turn on a red light.”
Right-on-red spread across the country in the 1970s in response to the Arab oil embargo against the United States and oil rationing. States introduced it as a gas-savings measure: The theory was that it would reduce idling at red lights.