Abstract
In the United States, the steady yellow light means that a driver should either speed up or slow down. State laws written about a driver’s behavior at these yellow lights are vague and indeterminate and result in what is referred to as the dilemma zone (Hurwitz et al. in Transp Res Part F Traffic Psychol Behav 15(2): 132–143, 2012). This paper will reconsider law’s vagueness as intentional rather than problematic, insofar as cultural understandings of the yellow light lead to a framework of visual jurisprudence in which drivers interact with law through legal discretion and common sense confronting a yellow light. Through a jurisprudential juxtaposition between the yellow light and red light cameras used to enforce yellow lights, the semiotics of automaticity compete with the semiotics of context-bound decision-making.
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Marusek, S. Visual Jurisprudence of the American Yellow Traffic Light. Int J Semiot Law 27, 183–191 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-013-9323-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-013-9323-z