Traffic lights on on-ramps are very dangerous. It seems that the various state dept's of transportation around this country have lost their minds. Or, they've downsized everyone that understood the original design of the traffic system.

They seem to think that if there is any problem (read accidents in a certain area) that the only solution is to stop more traffic. Oh yeah, THAT will help! Let's have some more grid-lock please. Let's encourage road rage, let's make more people late so that they're always in a hurry. Let's keep people in their vehicles even longer - sitting doing nothing - so they're encouraged to do something else, like talk on the cell phone, mess with the GPS or stereo, type emails on their phones, read the newspaper, whatever. Yeah, THAT will make our roadways safer.

IDIOTS!

The whole idea of an on-ramp is to transition local (slow) traffic into the flow of highway (fast) traffic. Just as the whole idea of an off-ramp is to transition fast traffic into slow traffic. Vehicles need time and room to make that speed change, especially larger vehicles like semi-trucks. The whole idea behind both on and off ramps is to allow this transition in a separate space so that it does NOT interfere with the local or highway traffic flow. By the end of the on or off ramp, the merging vehicle is supposed to have matched the speed of the other traffic flow. Putting a red light or a stop sign in the mix throws this whole design out the window! Sure it may be appropriate to put a red light or a stop light at the end of an off-ramp, but NEVER for an on-ramp.

Dammit! This kind of thinking (or actually it is not thinking) is what really pisses me off about modern traffic management and road design. They create more dangerous situations in order to solve a problem. It only exacerbates the problem, and then they wonder why the number or accidents goes up every year!