The little-known traffic light law that causes drivers to fail their tests

Learner drivers fail their driving tests because they stopped at a red light for a little-known traffic law that could get you, too. A quirk of the Highway Code is to blame for the failure, which has gone viral on YouTube and social media apps.

Driving instructor Aman, from Clear View Driving, posted a clip of a mock test on her YouTube channel to demonstrate the unusual loophole. In the clip, a schoolgirl exits a T-junction onto a main road, only to see a red light, where she stopped.

But Aman explained: “Go on, go on. (The light) is not for us. This red light does not apply to you,” reports Birmingham Live. The traffic lights that the student encountered were a secondary set that supported each other on the other side of the junction.

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There was no solid white line marked at the lights, meaning that cars already in the intersection can pass without stopping. So if you are turning onto the road using the intersection, the red light does not apply to you.

Taking to YouTube, the instructor said: “Last week I posted a video of Erin in her driving lesson, that clip caused a lot of confusion about whether to stop or wait/ who the light was for/ with pedestrians… So today the video go over a staggered traffic light intersection where I’ll go through all the questions everyone was asking.

“We are dealing with 2 sets of traffic lights that are located close to each other. Horizontal blinds in traffic lights are used to limit the distance that green can be seen. It will be placed on the 2nd set of traffic lights. A driver at the first set of lights and might have a red, but inadvertently see a green at the 2nd set of lights and go through the first.”

In response to this warning, one driver commented: “As a driver in Sweden I would find this really confusing as I’ve never seen a red light so far from an intersection that I shouldn’t follow him Honestly, I think it’s a poor design. I guess this traffic light is for people going straight. We’d put the traffic lights much closer to the intersection so that people turning around can barely see them, so obviously you shouldn’t stop.

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