It doesn’t have to be this way. As we know, the MUTCD gives traffic engineers leeway to use engineering judgment. If we want an all-pedestrian phase, for example, “an unacceptable number of conflicting pedestrian movements with right-turn-on-red maneuvers, especially involving children, older pedestrians, or persons with disabilities” would do the trick.9 The MUTCD doesn’t give us much to go on, so how we define an “an unacceptable number” is entirely up to us. Take the case of sixth-grader Eliza Almuina. Eliza was walking to her school carnival in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the day before
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