Image via iStock/Getty Images Plus.Drivers will no longer be able to make right turns at red lights in DC beginning on Wednesday—well, okay, at some intersections. The DC Council’s Safer Streets Amendment Act of 2022 called for an end to right turn on red everywhere in town, a ban that was eventually scheduled to take place on January 1. However, the measure will apply at only about half of the District’s intersections, the Washington Post reported last month. Why? A number of reasons. The act has never been popular with the administration of DC Mayor Muriel Bowser, who didn’t sign it. The DC Department of Transportation declined to pay for “gateway” signs that would inform drivers entering the District of its ban, because the council didn’t explicitly fund the project. Drivers from most other jurisdictions in the US, where right turn on red is overwhelmingly legal, would be unlikely to know about the law, DDOT director Sharon Kershbaum told the Post. Who else doesn’t like it? Republicans in Congress. As Michael Schaffer wrote in Politico this past summer, right turns on red have become a front in the GOP’s culture wars. Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee have floated the idea of prohibiting DC—which has no voting representation in Congress—from banning right turns on red. While such proposals rarely make it into law, you can probably expect more noise about right turn on red when Republicans take full control of the federal government next month. What will it mean for drivers? All intersections where motorists can’t turn right on red will bear signs, says Darnisha Green, a DDOT spokesperson. No sign means right turns on red are allowed. Drivers who violate the ban at intersections where the turns are prohibited could be subject to a $100 fine. There’s no map available from DDOT of the intersections where right turn on red is banned, Green says: “DDOT continues to install these signs and drivers should come to a complete stop each time they approach an intersection when there is a red light.”The post DC’s Kinda-Sorta Ban of Right Turns on Red Begins January 1 first appeared on Washingtonian.