Just wanted to clear that up. So the next time you see a red light, stop your motherfucking car. I don’t care if it USED to be green, if you even SAW it when it was green. When the light turns red, you ALWAYS stop.
What if it just turned red? Well, the light turns yellow for a moment. When you see it’s yellow, if you’re not in the intersection, you SLOW DOWN AND STOP. Just as if it were red. Get it?
Can I expand this to “STOP signs also mean STOP”? Not slow down a very slight fraction while screaming around the corner, but actually make your vehicle cease all forward movement. Making a right turn doesn’t exempt you from stop signs (or red lights), either, contrary to all evidence around these parts.
I thought that yellow meant: speed the fuck up you’re about to miss the light!
Oh, man, this makes me think of the huge tailgating problem we have down here at major intersections. Can we further expand this to “STOP even if the light was green 5 cars ahead”? Just because you’re two inches from someone’s bumper doesn’t mean you inherit their green light.
Have you ever lived in New Jersey? The only color that means go is yellow, and it means go like hell.
I remember the scene from the movie “Starman” in which the two main characters are driving cross country. The alien character(Beau Bridges) has been observing Karen Allen’s character as she drives. While she sleeps he decides to drive and nearly gets the two of them creamed by a semi as he accelerates sharply through a yellow light.
She shrieks “What are you doing?” and he calmly replies “I watched you very carefully. Red means stop, green means go, and yellow means go *very * fast.”
When I learned to drive in Los Angeles eleven years ago (ack! ELEVEN YEARS???) there were virtually no left turn arrows. I don’t know if this has changed or not, but I suspect it hasn’t.
So the procedure for turning left was to pull into the middle of the intersection, wait for the light to turn red, wait for everybody to quit running the red, and then go so that the people with the green light could then…go. Often several cars would go through behind the lead car. Four or five, on rare occasions. I tried not to be farther back than the second car. By LA standards I was a wimp driver. By the standards of the next place I lived, I wasn’t a wimp at all, though I wasn’t nearly as dumb as some. Yikes.
So a green meant – if you were turning left – to wait for people to quit running the light then go. A yellow meant nothing except keep waiting for the red. A green meant you have to sit there until the damn light turned red.
Ack…“a green meant to wait for a red light and then wait for people to stop running it. then go.”
This is an everyday event in Chicago. When I am walking down the street, I will sometimes shout at a passing motorist who just blew through a light five seconds after it turned red, “THE LIGHT IS RED!”. Usually, I receive the bird in response.
WhiterRabbit I have never understood the lack of protected turns in LA! I’m not a traffic-ologist, but I would think that protected turns would increase traffic flow in a smooth manner and reduce accidents. Who knows!
You are right about the red light running, though. You have no choice.
Okay, I’m going to shock you all. I mean shock you, too.
We’ve still got a lot of power problems post-Tropical Storm Cindy, so today when I was driving down a fairly main street, at an intersection with the cross street the traffic light was on four-way blink, yellow on my street and red on the cross street.
And traffic coming from all four directions was treating it as a four-way stop. Just the way my driver’s ed teacher said to do it back in the stone ages, but which I had not seen in the ensuing 35 years…until today.
Shocked the shit out of me, I gah-ron-tee you!
That’s odd… I tend to be somewhat more liberal than the ideal behavior in running red/yellow lights…unless there are people already in the intersection. Then, I don’t enter the intersection unless I see I will be able to go all the way through. In Orlando, we have plenty of protected turns, but sometimes there can be gridlock during rush hour. I hate causing gridlock and being the victim of it.
This is acceptable. Of course, these days, you can’t even go when the light turn reds because the people approaching the interesection in the opposite lane are sure as christ to run the motherfucking light.
Turn reds, turns red. :doh:
Actually, I don’t think it means a four-way stop unless it’s blinking red in all four directions. What you have indicated is a proceed cautiously for the yellow side with right-of-way over the red side, which must stop then proceed when clear.
Had I been on the street with the yellow blink, I’d have been screaming bloody murder at you and the others who were stopping at a blinking yellow.
It’s when the light is out completely that you treat it as a four-way stop.
Well, you could always come to Roanoke.
Here, Red definitely means “stop”. When you see Green, that means “continue stopping”…the noises coming from the horns of the people behind you are simply meant to applaud your astute observance of this local bylaw. When turning right from a single-lane road onto a side road in Roanoke, it is customary to stop for at least ten seconds in order to ensure that the obvious lack of any traffic obstructing the turn is in fact not an illusion caused by the myriad hallucinogenics apparently consumed by the general populous on a day-to-day basis. When turning left, in addition to performing the above-mentioned test, be certain to take the time to train yourself in the art of extrasensory perception, thus allowing you to be as certain as possible that not only is there no oncoming traffic currently visible, but also that you do not sense any forthcoming in the immediate future. After all, as curvy as some of these roads are, you might only be able to see about a mile ahead, and is that really enough? You can never be too careful! Speaking of curves in the road, should you encounter one whose degree of arc is less than or equal to the curvature of the Earth, you may interpret this to mean “stop” as well. Remember, folks: speed kills; so, if your speed is zero, you increase your odds by a whopping 153 percent!
Now, in the past, a few curious folks have asked us if there are any situations in which the conscientious Roanoker is allowed to “go”. To this, we answer: why, of course, silly! Our traffic lights don’t have three colors for no good reason! When you see that big ol’ amber beauty in the middle light up, that’s your cue to gun it like there’s no tomorrow. Remember, you only have 4-7 seconds to get through it, so if you’re, oh, half a mile away, you’d better REALLY give it the gun! And, of course, there’s one more situation you need to know about. When you’re at a stoplight, and you’re waiting to turn left, and the light changes from Red into a little green circle, that’s what we call an “unprotected left”. We call it that because, while you’d normally protect yourself at a green light by not going anywhere for at least a good minute, in this particular case, you need to go left…and you need to do it NOW, which means giving up that usual protection. So, crank that wheel, jam that accelerator, and give it all you’ve got! If it seems as though there are other cars headed in the general direction of “straight into your hood” when you do this, well, that just means they’re not ignoring the green light like they should be. Give them a friendly reminder, Roanoke-style, with the local gesture we call the “Happy Middle Finger Wave”! If you do it just right, we guarantee they’ll not soon forget your pleasant encounter!
Yes, come visit beautiful Roanoke! We make driving FUN!
Hope to see you soon.
Jeff Bridges, not Beau.
How appropriate.
Ah, :smack: At least it was one of those guys!