Dark Signal, Blocked Box
5:40 p.m. in Santurce. A neighborhood power outage has left the traffic signal at a four-way intersection completely dark. You are northbound in the right lane of a four-lane road. A car in the eastbound lane is already stopped at the corner when you arrive; a second car pulls up on your right at the same moment you stop. On the corner, a woman with a stroller waits to cross. Ahead of you, a car that entered earlier is stopped in the middle of the intersection, blocking the crosswalk and the far lane, because traffic beyond it is backed up. Your phone buzzes with a text message on the seat next to you.
1. The signal is dark. Who has the right of way, and in what order should the vehicles move?
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A dark signal is treated as a stop sign for every approach - an all-way stop.
- Pedestrians first. The woman with the stroller in or entering the crosswalk goes before any vehicle, regardless of arrival order.
- First to stop, first to go. The eastbound car that was already stopped when you arrived has priority over you.
- Ties go to the right. You and the car on your right stopped simultaneously, so you yield to that car.
The failure mode examiners test is treating a dark signal as a green light or as a two-way stop for the major road. Nobody on any approach has a green light, so nobody has an unconditional right to proceed.
2. Traffic beyond the intersection is backed up. When it is your turn, should you pull forward even if you cannot clear the intersection?
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No. Being 'next' does not entitle you to block the box.
- You may enter only when there is room on the far side for your whole vehicle to clear the intersection. Otherwise you stop behind the stop line and wait.
- Entering would leave you sitting across the crosswalk, forcing the pedestrian with the stroller into traffic, and it would block cross traffic when the signal is restored or when a gap opens.
- The car already stuck in the middle made exactly this mistake; do not repeat it, and do not follow it into the box.
- Honking from behind is not a legal reason to enter. Hold your position and keep watching the pedestrian and the cross traffic.
3. Your phone buzzes on the seat next to you. What do you do, and why does the setting matter?
Read the worked answer
Ignore it until you are legally parked.
- A two-second glance at 30 mph covers about 88 feet of travel with your eyes off the road - and this is the worst possible moment for that: no signal control, unpredictable cross traffic, a pedestrian, and a blocked intersection all at once.
- Reaching for the phone also pulls your shoulder and hand off the wheel, which changes your steering in exactly the low-speed, tight-quarters maneuver where precision matters.
- If you must respond, complete the intersection, find a legal parking space or lot, stop, and then handle the message. Do not stop in a travel lane or on the shoulder of a live arterial to read it.