How to Make a U-Turn on Route 6 in Dartmouth

It's time to go back to driving school.

I travel Route 6 in Dartmouth almost every day, and just about every day I witness people making dangerously wrong U-turns on Route 6.

Pictured above is an example of one of the very many areas to legally reverse direction on Route 6. These breaks in the road are specifically designed for drivers to safely make a legal U-turn.

The problem is that far too many drivers have no idea how to properly make the turn.

Disregarding the white car in the photo, what would you do if you were driving westbound here on Route 6 right by the Moby Dick Motel and wanted to turn around and head back east towards Aaron Pools and Spas?

Would you hug the median strip like this?

Or would you take a wider turn like this?

While the difference looks subtle in these pictures, in reality, there is a big difference.

According to Wanderley Fonseca, the owner at Lessons Driving School in New Bedford, the correct way to reverse direction is displayed in the photo directly above.

"You want to make a wider turn. You want to stay on the right side of the road," Fonseca said.

The key is to always remain on the right side of the road. At no point do you want to drive on the left side of the road, as shown in the first photo with the pink arrow. If you drive on the left side of the road and someone coming from the opposite direction is also looking to make a U-turn, you could cause a head-on collision.

While always driving on the right side of the road makes perfect sense to me, I am shocked by how many people don't do it when they're trying to reverse direction on Route 6. Sometimes they'll beep their horns and yell at me because they think that I should also be driving on the left side of the road. It is bizarre.

Let's try to spread the word about this concept. As long as you are driving in the United States, driving on the right side of the road is a good thing.