Is it safe to turn left when you see a flashing yellow arrow? That's the question for drivers around Chapel Hill, as the town begins installing a signal that is unfamiliar to many drivers.

The answer is that it's legal, but it's up to the driver to make sure it's safe.

The first yellow left-turn arrow popped up a couple of weeks ago in the left-turn lane at NC 54's intersecton with Hamilton Road.

After a solid green arrow -- which means that left-turn drivers have the right of way -- a flashing yellow arrow appears.

The flashing yellow left arrow means this: It's still legal to turn left, but only after you yield right-of-way to oncoming traffic and pedestrians.

Traffic engineers have been promoting the yellow arrow to replace the solid green ball for left-turn traffic at similar intersections. Both mean the same thing for left-turners: It's legal to turn left, after you yield to pedestrians and oncoming drivers. ... [MORE]

It was about a year ago that Helen Joostema got her red-light camera ticket in the mail from the town of Cary. A candid camera had snapped her as she turned left from Kildaire Farm Road onto Cary Parkway.

"I'm still fuming," she said on the phone today after she read this week's Road Worrier. "I thought I had gotten over it until I read your article."

Joostema didn't think the fleeting yellow light had given her enough time to stop safely before the light turned red, especially with another car right on her tail.

"If I just jammed on the brakes, I would have been hit from the back," she said.

She dialed the phone number on her ticket. She talked to a rude guy who insisted that the yellow light lasted 4 seconds. . . .

OK, maybe the Road Worrier's crude method of counting time won't hold up in traffic court ("Yellow is fleeting on Cary traffic light").

If the Road Worrier wants to do a more credible job of counting traffic signal times, reader Paul Ferguson points out that even cheap digital watches have timer options. Agreed.

But you get the idea: When you only get a brief yellow-light warning that you'll have to stop soon, it's easy to get caught running a red light.

How brief is the yellow light warning at some intersections in Cary's red-light camera program?

Cary says 3 or 4 seconds. I'm skeptical. And some readers are skeptical, too.

I really believe that the yellow traffic light at Kildaire Farm and Maynard goes off within 1 or 2 seconds - Trupti Desai . . .