By Bill Corliss

The Department of Motor Vehicles in California is establishing new guidelines to monitor senior drivers’ ability to drive safely. One major change is a new vision check that will include tests of mature drivers’ peripheral vision, depth perception, and ability to evaluate motion. It is used at six DMV offices in the state and should be implemented statewide by 2012.

As a result of increased monitoring of mature drivers, I have more contact with this age group, in my role as a driving instructor. In instruction sessions, it has become apparent that senior drivers struggle with visual checks when turning right on a red light. With the advent of the green arrow (a protected left turn), the visual checks drivers need to make to safely turn right on a red light are different than they were two decades ago. The previous teaching of looking left, right, and left again is not sufficient or safe.

In updating these visual checks, drivers must learn both WHERE to look and WHAT to look for, as they turn right on a red light. Simply stated, a safe turn may be made by checking left, center, and right (LCR). Each of these looks checks for a potential danger and each of these dangers could have a green light.

While checking left, a driver would look for a car coming straight from the left on a green light. This has not changed and has been taught and executed for years. My mature students routinely take this visual check.

However, very few look to the center, out the front windshield, to the car coming head on. These vehicles will be turning to their left on a green arrow. Drivers making a left on a green arrow are on a direct collision course with a right turn on a red! This conflict is new. This turning green emerged in our traffic system after mature drivers were trained. Previously, this left turn would yield to a right turn, but currently the arrow is green while the right turn has a red. Not making this visual check causes preventable crashes.

None of my mature drivers check to the right. What potential crash are they missing? The driver who is making a U-turn on a green arrow.

To summarize, always think LCR. When turning right on a red, remember to make three visual checks: Left, Center, and Right (LCR). On the left, look for a car coming straight at you; in the center, look for the car making a turn on a left green arrow; and finally, check to the right for a U-turn being made on a green arrow. Only one of these potential conflicts will be moving at any one time, the challenge is to locate the one that has the green light.