If there is one ‘No Go’ area on the road for any driver, it is the Yellow Box – the diamond-shaped box marked on the road surface beyond the traffic signals on busy crossings. You can, of course, drive through it but you must not at any time stop within its demarcated boundaries.
When you have been waiting at the red signal for some time and it finally turns green it is your right to move on. But there are times and occasions when such a move would amount to an infringement of the traffic law.
That occasion is when the rush of traffic is so heavy that even when the signal is green the vehicles ahead of you are still trying to leave the net of yellow lines beyond the signal. There could be many reasons for this scenario. Maybe the next signal is still red which is barring those who are ahead of you to clear the space. Maybe some vehicle has broken down ahead and is clogging the road. Maybe there is an accident. Whatever the reason, the bottomline is that the traffic is static, it’s not moving…or barely.
In the meantime your light turns green. Here is the big temptation to crawl up to the last vehicle in that queue even though that and a couple of other vehicles may still not have cleared the square. Might be hanging on to the coat tails of the yellow net so to say.
But you must curb this temptation. Yes, it is your right of way. Yes, the road is partially clear and you could tag on to the last of the vehicles from the previous queue still lurking in the Yellow Box.
But you must bear in mind that if you do so, and the queue you join does not budge and worse still, if those behind you follow in your wake, once your green signal turns red, someone else’s red signal would turn green and that’s where the problems comes.
Since you may have gone ahead and joined the static queue in the Yellow Box you will have created a barrier, a block, barring that “someone else’s” right of way. And it is going to be a fine traffic mess in the middle of the square – or the Yellow Box – when no vehicle is able to move and yet another signal turns green.
The thing to bear in mind therefore is that if the Yellow Box is not clear, do not enter it even if the signal is green giving you all-clear otherwise.