There’s been a lot of talk about the Pittsburgh Left lately, largely because of Steelers QB Ben Roethlisberger’s recent collision with a left-turning car at the foot of the 10th Street Bridge.
But there seems to be confusion about what the “Pittsburgh Left” actually entails. Some people seem to define it as “any aggressive attempt to turn in an intersection.” KDKA-TV, for example, quoted “authorities” saying the other driver involved in the accident “made a ‘Pittsburgh Left,’ which means she followed directly behind another car going through the light at the intersection and didn’t have a protected green arrow.” One local blogger commenting on the Roethlisberger controversy, meanwhile, defined the Pittsburgh Left as being “what Pittsburghers do at an intersection when turning left.”
Logically, though, not every left turn made in Pittsburgh can be a “Pittsburgh Left.” After all, people make left turns in other cities too. I’ve seen it myself.
With the Steelers so ingrained in Pittsburgh’s identity, perhaps it’s natural to think Roethlisberger’s accident somehow reflected our identity as well.
Consider, for example, the coverage given this vital issue in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. A June 14 dispatch called the Pittsburgh Left a “vehicular tic that compels Pittsburgh drivers to rocket through left turns heedless of oncoming traffic,” and called it “as unique to the region as a Primanti’s sandwich.” Yet in the next paragraph, the piece acknowledged that “[a]ccording to the purest definition of this nationally known colloquialism,” Roethlisberger’s bike accident “likely doesn’t qualify.”
As the Trib noted, and as longtime residents know, the Pittsburgh Left takes place when two or more cars one planning to go straight, and the other to turn left face off at a red light without a “left-turn only” lane or signal. The Pittsburgh Left occurs when the light turns green, and the driver turning left takes the turn without yielding to the oncoming car. That’s not what happened in Roethlisberger’s accident: By all accounts, the light had already been green in both directions when Roethlisberger collided with the car.
Even so, if you look at page 39 of your driver’s manual, you’ll see that the Pittsburgh Left is technically illegal. (“Drivers turning left must yield to oncoming vehicles going straight ahead,” the manual advises.) So how did it get started? Why does it continue?
No one can pinpoint the origins of the practice, of course. But when executed correctly, the Pittsburgh Left is a justifiable, and maybe even inevitable, response to Pittsburgh’s history and topography.
Pittsburgh is an old city, many of whose streets were designed before automobiles held sway. (The streets of the Golden Triangle, for example, were laid out in the 1790s, and still provide the template for Downtown today.) It’s also a city whose neighborhoods are nestled among hills and river valleys. Broad stretches of flat land, like those alongside the rivers, were taken up by steel mills and other industrial uses. As a result, even neighborhoods with a lot of room, like the South Side, ended up being cramped.
Arguably, those factors help give Pittsburgh its “tight-knit” neighborhoods and vaunted “small-town” feel. But they also mean that street grids are constricted, with little room for amenities like left-turn-only lanes. The absence of such lanes means drivers have to solve traffic problems on their own. Instead of letting one car at the head of an intersection bottle up traffic behind it, the Pittsburgh Left gives the turning driver a chance to get out of everyone else’s way. In exchange for a few seconds of patience, the Pittsburgh Left allows traffic in both directions to move smoothly for the duration of the signal.
Of course, the system only works if both drivers know about it. No doubt that’s why newcomers find it so vexing. Still, there’s a lot to like about Pittsburgh driving habits. In a 1999 report, the Surface Transportation Policy Project found that Pittsburgh had the country’s fourth-lowest death rate from aggressive driving. “The majority of the metropolitan areas with lower aggressive-driving deaths are older” and less oriented to the automobile, the report concluded.
In other words, not only are quirks like the Pittsburgh Left innocent in the Roethlisberger crash they may actually be saving lives.
This article appears in Jun 22-28, 2006.
This move pisses me off to no end. Assholes do this illegal and danderous move all the time, and I live in Harrisburg! Even so, it is still ILLEGAL anywhere in PA. It is rude and obnoxious driving behaviour, and is the cause of most intersection accidents.
Causes traffic, too. So if someone doesn’t take his/her right of way to go straight, what happens to the drivers behind them? During rush hour, if 1 car doesn’t make it through the light that should have at every cycle, what happens? Yep, the line gets longer and longer and longer. Before you know it you have a traffic jam.
Both these comments are complete nonsense. How is it “rude and obnoxious”?!? It in NO way, shape, or form impedes oncoming traffic (as the left-turning vehicle is mostly through the turn well before the oncoming car even starts forward) and it reduced traffic congestion at intersections where left-turning vehicles would otherwise back up into the traffic stream.
In addition, contrary to what is written here, and, unfortunately, every other site that discusses it, the procedure is NOT “technically illegal” (or even any other type of illegal). The law, as quoted, is that “drivers turning left must yield to oncoming vehicles going straight ahead”. If the traffic in the opposing lane is not currently in motion, regardless of whether it has the signal to do so, it is NOT “oncoming”. In no legal jurisdiction is “oncoming” synonymous with “opposing”. So while you may find the procedure obnoxious (most likely due to a misguided territoriality over your lane) it is technically legal.
The law reads:
§ 3322. Vehicle turning left.
The driver of a vehicle intending to turn left within an intersection or into an alley, private road or driveway shall yield the right-of-way to any vehicle approaching from the opposite direction which is so close as to constitute a hazard.
And oncoming traffic is still oncoming traffic, even when stopped by a red light (see chapter 2 of the pen dot driving manual). Even if it weren’t however, and your definition were to be accepted both lights turn green at the same time. The moment your troublesome driver going straight ahead started to move they would a) be oncoming (or approaching as per the language of the law) and b) be so close as to constitute a hazard. At that point, like it or not you’d be required to yield, regardless of whether or not you had completed your turn. The only way you are right (again, granting your incorrect definition of oncoming) is if you can somehow complete your turn before the other vehicle begins to move. Like when there is a turn arrow…
There is no world in which your turn is actually legal, sorry. The yinzer lack of sense, vocal defense of it and propensity to give the finger when thwarted in the attempt is mostly sad and occasionally troubling. In Robinson, for example, you’d think people would realize that they are surrounded by out-of-towners who dont’t know about the thing.
There are plenty of large intersections where I can make a complete left turn before any vehicle other than a top fuel dragster could possibly traverse the distance fast enough to hit me. In these instances, I do not consider the car to be “so close as to constitute a hazard”. The current speed and capabilities of the oncoming traffic must absolutely be taken into account here. What if the oncoming traffic was a horse and buggy or something else with an equal lack of ‘get up and go’? A similar situation would be yielding to someone in a crosswalk. If I’m nearing a crosswalk on the north side of a 5 lane road and a 104 year-old man with a walker steps into the crosswalk on the south side, should I really stop and wait for him??