while I was growing up in the northeastern U.S. state of Massachusetts, the first Californian whom I met explained to me that California had become the only U.S. state to adopt a law permitting cars to make right turns on a red light at an intersection, after coming to a full stop. In the U.S. such traffic laws are the prerogative of individual American states, not of the national government. To my fellow Massachusetts citizens of the early 1960’s, and to the citizens of all other American states, that seemed an insanely dangerous idea that only those crazy freaked-out Californians would even
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