Any time a voter contemplates going right, they must be stopped!
BOSTON, Dec. 29 1979— Driving in Boston, a legendary madcap free‐for‐all affair known nationwide for its resemblance to a drunken go‐cart race, will take on new dimensions Tuesday when Massachusetts bows to Federal pressure and becomes the last of the 50 states to allow motorists to make right turns on a red light.
...Governor King's predecessor, Gov. Michael S. Dukakis, had refused to make the change, calling the rightturn‐on‐red rule dangerous to pedestrians in such an urbanized state as Massachusetts. Connecticut complied earlier this year, and the change here will leave only New York City still protesting the Federal policy, which was oesigneci as a conservation measure in the 1973‐1974 Arab oil embargo...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Turn_on_red
That Bay State gubernatorial throwback to the motorist-hating state-level American legislators at the dawn of the 20th century, one Michael Dukakis, was infamous in Bay State history for stiffly resisting calls from the United States Congress in the late 1970s to allow right turns on red lights. When the Bay State finally allowed "RTOR", Dukakis promptly put up "No Turn On Red" signs at SO many Massachusetts road intersections that the United States Senate did a review of Dukakis' behavior in regards to that action, and found that roughly half of those signs simply had no justification for being posted at so MANY intersections.
Finding newspaper proof of how all this happened COULD be a challenge...!
The PIPE (talk) 17:57, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
Hmm, you may be right. This Harvard Crimson article indicates Massachusetts pased the law on August 8, 1979, to go into effect on January 1, 1980. The Crimson also states Massachusetts was the last state to change, and also notes that signs prohibiting the behavior were at least planned for 90% of intersections. I will change the article. MarginalCost (talk) 05:43, 1 July 2017 (UTC)