Will I get a ticket if I don’t stop for three seconds before turning right at a red light?

I get that you’re supposed to come to a complete stop at a red light or a stop sign, but is there a specific length of time that you have to stay stopped before moving, even if you’re making a right turn? I’ve heard that you have to wait three seconds. – Ben, Toronto

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At a red light or stop sign, you should stay stopped until it’s safe to go, full stop.

But there’s no magic number of seconds that police or photo radar cameras are watching for.

“You must come to a complete stop because that’s what the law says,” said Sean Shapiro, a road safety consultant and former Toronto traffic cop. “But [police and cameras aren’t] counting for three seconds when you’re stopped.”

In Ontario, the law says you have to stop at a red light until it turns green, or, if there’s no sign banning right turns on a red, until it’s safe to make a right turn. At a stop sign, you have to stop and yield to traffic that has the right of way.

The key word is stop – and that doesn’t mean rolling through, Shapiro said. If you don’t stop, you could get a $325 fine and three demerit points.

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While the rules vary by province, they all require you to come to a complete stop at a red light or stop sign. But none specify a time for how long you have to wait before you can make a turn.

We checked with police in several cities – they all said they don’t specifically time how long drivers stay stopped.

“As the old saying goes, it’s not a slow down sign, it’s a stop sign,” Corporal Michael McLaughlin, a spokesman for B.C. Highway Patrol, said in an email. “Police officers will often watch to see whether the wheels stop rotating completely before the vehicle proceeds.”

In some provinces, including British Columbia and Quebec, fines are less than $200. But in some provinces, fines are a lot higher. In Alberta, for instance, it’s $405, Alberta RCMP said in an email.

Typically, police only issue tickets if drivers “clearly are not stopping,” Shapiro said.

“If people didn’t come to the perfect stop that we’d like to see, I don’t think people are getting hammered for that,” he said. “[But] so many people are confused about right turns on reds. They think they don’t have to stop. And so I’ve watched five, six, seven cars in a row not stopping at all to make their turns.”

Caught on camera?

But what about red light cameras? Do they require you to stay stopped for a minimum time before turning?

We asked a few cities. Most, includingToronto and Edmonton, said that you can get a red light camera ticket if you don’t come to a complete stop before turning right at a red light – but none said there’s a minimum requirement for how long you have to stay stopped. Some, including Calgary, said they’re not issuing red light camera tickets for right turns at all.

Shapiro said that in Ontario, red light cameras are triggered by the speed you’re going when you cross the stop line – not by how long you stay stopped at the light.

“There are embedded strips in the pavement. If you pass them at a certain speed, it will arm the system,” he said. “You have to be doing roughly 25 kilometres an hour [or more] to trigger them. But there’s no minimum time you have to stop [if you’re turning right], it just doesn’t work that way.”

Unlike a ticket issued by an officer, photo enforcement tickets don’t come with demerits and don’t go on your driving record. That means they won’t affect your insurance rates.

So, even if you won’t get a ticket for not waiting three seconds to turn, should you be waiting that long anyway, just to be safe?

“If there’s no one around, three seconds would be an eternity,” Shapiro said. “But if there’s a lot of traffic, if there are pedestrians, you’re waiting longer than that.”

Drivers who take a quick glance without stopping before turning right at a red light or stop sign could easily miss a cyclist or pedestrian, McLaughlin said.

“Drivers are notoriously bad at judging their own perceptive ability at intersections,” McLaughlin said. “It is also very common for police writing tickets at intersections to see a driver only look one way when they are cruising through a stop sign to make a turn … people can’t process information quickly enough to look all ways without stopping."

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