Flashing Yellow Arrow With a Stroller in the Crosswalk
At 6:15 p.m. you are first in the left-turn pocket of a six-lane arterial, facing a flashing yellow arrow. The overhead sign reads LEFT TURN YIELD ON FLASHING YELLOW ARROW. Oncoming traffic is steady at about 45 mph, and a lifted pickup with tinted windows is closing from roughly 300 feet with no visible headlights. A pedestrian pushing a stroller has just stepped off the curb on your left, into the crosswalk you will drive through as you complete the turn. A cyclist is in the bike lane to your right. The driver behind you taps the horn, then edges forward until the bumper is about two feet from yours. The arrow has been flashing yellow for roughly eight seconds, and you know from experience that this intersection's protected green lasts only about twelve.
1. May you pull forward into the intersection to wait, and what must you yield to before completing the turn?
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You may enter the intersection on the flashing yellow arrow and wait there for a gap, but entering is permission to position, not permission to turn. A flashing yellow arrow is an unprotected movement: it never confers right-of-way. Before completing the turn you owe a yield to two separate parties. Oncoming through traffic has priority - the dark pickup at 300 feet at 45 mph is roughly four to five seconds out and is a hazard, especially with no visible headlights. The pedestrian with the stroller has priority over everything, and you must not stop your car on top of the crosswalk while you wait. If the far side of the intersection is congested, do not enter at all, because you would block the crosswalk when the light changes. The cyclist to your right matters only if your path crosses the bike lane, which it normally does not on a left turn - but check before you swing.
2. While you are waiting in the intersection, the arrow goes to a steady yellow, then a steady red. What do you do about the light, the pedestrian, and the driver honking behind you?
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Once you have lawfully entered the intersection, a red arrow does not strand you and does not require you to reverse - backing up into a tailgater is far more dangerous than clearing. You finish the turn as soon as it is safe, which means after the pedestrian with the stroller has cleared your path and after oncoming traffic that constitutes an immediate hazard has passed. The steady yellow told you the protected phase was ending; the red tells you no new vehicle may enter, not that a vehicle already positioned must teleport out. The honking driver behind you has no bearing on any of this: their impatience does not convert a yield into a right-of-way, and pulling out in front of the pickup to satisfy them would put the stroller at risk. Prioritize the pedestrian, then the gap, then clear.
3. Suppose instead the left-turn signal is a steady red arrow and the through lanes show a green ball, and you are still behind the limit line. Can you stop and then turn left when it is clear?
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No. A steady red arrow is an absolute prohibition on the movement it governs, and stopping does not convert it into a yield sign. California does permit a left turn after stopping on red in one narrow case - from a one-way street onto another one-way street, unless a sign prohibits it - and that exception does not apply here: this is a two-way arterial, and in any event a red arrow overrides the general left-on-red allowance. Contrast this with a flashing red ball, which functions like a stop sign and would let you proceed when safe, and with a flashing yellow arrow, which lets you turn unprotected. The habit worth building is to read the shape and mode together: arrow versus ball tells you which movement is governed, and steady versus flashing tells you whether the movement is prohibited or merely unprotected.