We have an amazing traffic light system in this country. When the light’s red, you stop. And when it turns green, you put your foot on the accelerator and DRIVE! (I suppose you might have to shift gears, too. But that’s it.) It’s very simple. It does not mean that you sit there and
a.) Contemplate the meaning of the universe.
b.) Comb your hair.
c.) Rummage around under the seat for a map.
d.) Stare vacantly into space while trying to remember all the words to “Rocky Top.”
e.) Try to figure out why every street in Nashville changes its name 80 times in the course of about 3 miles.
None of us are sitting at a traffic light for our health. There is no reason to take 10 minutes to decide to leave the lovely traffic light. GO, GO, GO!!!
I don’t know, I tend to find failure to stop at red lights a more worrying trait amongst the drivers here. That and the belief that a night bar hopping down Broadway is compatible with a drive home. I sometimes think that after 10 on the weekend I am in the sober minority on 24E…
Hah. Try it out here, where half the left turns have green/red arrows. And the numbnuts wakes up just in time to zip through leaving everyone else stuck for another cycle.
Horns don’t work. I’m debating a rocket launcher on the hood, and a cowcatcher on the front bumper to push the smoldering debris out of my way.
What always amazes me is when they notice the light is green, they act surprised. Did they think it would be different at this light?
This morning, I’m on a main street 2 lanes each direction. I see from 200 or 300 yards away the light has just turned green, I moved into the clear lane, and flew by the pick-up still stopped. (I was going 35, in a 35MPH zone) He followed me to yell at me. saying I could have killed him (WTF?!)
An addendum: when you are behind somebody at a red light, and the light turns green, and the person in front of you goes…GO! I have missed green lights despite being no more than a dozen cars back because every single person around here seems to have to process this anew at every single light they encounter.
“Hey, the person in front of me is going. We were at a red light, so I guess he’s running the red light. I won’t do that, though, nope. I’m a good citizen. Weird that everyone in front of him decided to run the light too. Huh. Maybe he figured that 'cause everyone else was doing it, it was OK for him to do it too. But I’m not gonna. I’ll just sit here until the light…what’s this? A horn? From behind me? But why? I know not. (Looks up.) Ah, the light has turned green! Excellent. I shall go now.”
…and then the person behind him, the one who honked the horn, seemingly has to go through this same routine. Generally they’ll be a little bit quicker; I usually only hear one horn per two lights. I try to do my part by riding the ass of the car in front of me for the 20 yards it takes to get past the intersection (at which point I back off to a reasonable following distance), but alas, it is to no avail, for when I glance in my rear-view mirror after passing the intersection, the person immediately behind me has only just started to accelerate.
Or slows to a crawl several hundred feet before making a right turn.
But going as soon as the light turns green without looking is a recipe for disaster around where I live. First, a car or two have entered the intersection a few picoseconds before the light turned red, so they are technically legal, but still deadly. And in some intersections three cars typically make left turns after the left turn signal has turned red. They’ve been waiting long enough, and no one is stopping them,
But the people who have to leave lots of space before them while turning bug me too. I suppose their neurons don’t fire quite as fast as most of ours do.
I agree that someone in front of you failing to go at a green light for 5 or more seconds would be annoying…but my traffic gripe is everyone is a such a damn hurry that it gets ridiculous. Yes i have been in situations where i was watching the light very attentively, and just as the light turns green and i begin to press on the gas the jackass behind me honks…it couldn’t have been any longer than a damned second!
I understand that everyone has very very important things to do, but on a daily basis i see assholes honking at little old ladies who are slowing down to turn into their driveway…If i believed everyone was as rude in their everyday lives as they were on the road humanity would look bleak.
villa: *I don’t know, I tend to find failure to stop at red lights a more worrying trait amongst the drivers here. *
As Voyager noticed, the two phenomena are probably related. That is, sane drivers who stop when they come to a red light tend to be more cautious about going when the light turns green, because they need to check for non-sane drivers who come barrelling through from the other direction without noticing that their light is now—hey! surprise!—red.
I agree that some drivers are just slow as molasses. But given how common red-light-running seems to have become, I wouldn’t expect any intelligent driver just to zip right ahead as soon as the light goes green without first taking a damn good look left and right .
Then there’s the being who is behind me, and so concerned he’s going to get stuck through another light cycle, he gets so close to the wee Mini that I’m afraid we might have to get married.
Whenever I look into my rearview mirror and see nothing but an enormous chrome grille what has attached itself apparently to my boot, I cannot help but think of Blackadder’s Christmas Carol:
‘Baldrick, I want you to take this and go out, and buy a turkey so large you’d think its mother had been rogered by an omnibus.’
Well, I look at it this way. Somebody behind me unjustifiably honking away doesn’t do anything. I ignore it, life continues unchanged. Somebody in front of me refusing to go, after the somebody in front of HIM has already refused to go, etc., etc., creates a ripple effect that (IMNSHO) significantly slows down traffic as a whole.
That said, I never honk my horn at somebody unless it’s plainly obvious they’re just not paying attention (i.e., I can see they’re reading a book instead of looking at the light), and even then, I keep it to a quick burst. None of that “greenlightHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONNNNNNNNNKKKKKKKKKKK” stuff.
Ok, I liked these posts, they made me laugh, but I have to expose myself as a recent slow-to-goer. However, there’s a good reason why I no longer gun it once the light returns to green: I’m almost always traveling with my babies, in an attempt to get them to take naps & stay asleep. If I pull away sharply, my little boy’s head goes slumping forward and I’m terrified he’s not breathing, so I have to reach back and grab his noggin. Which is not the safest way to drive. His carseat is contoured to provide resting spots, but he’s still vulnerable to leaning forward at a precarious angle, particularly on acceleration.
Just sayin’. It never would’ve occurred to me that the other drivers could be slow for a reason.
There are people, taxi drivers prominent among their ranks, who believe in honking as soon as the light turns green, no matter how quickly the person in front of them is moving. If anyone does this to me, they can be sure that their journey over the next block or so will be extremely slow, and might also involve looking at my outstretched arm and raised middle finger.
That said, i do agree with the OP about drivers who just won’t pay attention, and who always have something better to do than look at the traffic lights. Yesterday, i was out jogging, and was waiting at an intersection. There was a line of traffic at one light, and when the light turned green, no-one moved. I looked to see what the cause of the delay was, and it was some dopey cow on her cell phone, chatting away, and completely oblivious to everything else going on around her.
I’m a slowgoer. There is no need hurry when I’m behind the wheel of an automobile. I’m cautious, I’m careful, and I’m not impelled to GO! GO! GO! the nanosecond the light turns green because some dude behind me as a hornet up his butt.
Have you never seen the aftermath of a collision at an intersection? You think: How could those two idiots possibly hit each other in such a wide open, clearly visible intersection? I’m willing to bet, on more than a few occasions, one driver was absolutely sure he’d make it through that yellow and the other driver—whoohaa—gunned it on the green.
There is an anecdote I learned growing up. I’m not so sure how true it is. I was fifteen or so, in the late seventies, visiting the backwoods towns and cities of Kentucky and was told that drivers down there never ran red lights. Everyone stopped on red. Because even before the light turned green drivers were on the edge of go, then were out of the gates at the first twinkle of green.
Why would this be a bad thing? Everyone stops on red, everyone goes on green. Traffic moves as quickly as possible, with the added benefit of people’s fast response time causing less people to run red lights. Sounds ideal to me.
