A Crossroads

Of all the drivers in all the world, there are many varieties. Some drive so fast they are simply blurs, others perpetually drive as if they are in a funeral procession. Some press their brakes the millisecond the light turns yellow, others take a yellow light to mean, "go faster." Some rock out to Kelly Clarkson and others listen to NPR. But amidst all these differences, there is at least one common trait that (I hope!) every single driver shares... the gift of sight.

Sure, every now and then something gets by us. "Holy S***, I didn't even see that pedestrian," or "That mailbox came out of nowhere." These are relativley small objects and occasionally these sorts of things slip out of our line of sight. As long as you catch yourself in time, these moments are acceptable.

But there is no excuse, aside from being legally blind, to not see a car. They are big, bulky, heaps of metal that are very hard to miss. Which brings me to my point: why do some people act as if their eyeballs have spontaneously dropped out of their heads when it comes to dealing with intersections??

Let's start with the classic 4-way stop intersection. The rules are simple: whoever gets there first gets to go first. What does this mean? It means that if you arrive at an intersection and you can SEE a car at any of the other three stop signs, you automatically don't get to go until every car you saw from the get-go has gone their own happy way. What does this not mean? It does not mean that if you arrive at an intersection and see cars waiting that they are simply there to twiddle their thumbs and won't mind if you go on right ahead. Wait your damn turn.

The other type of driving debauchery that occurs at intersections involves red lights in the place of stop signs. Now, I believe the problem I'm about to describe is something all of us (including me, I regret to say) are guilty of from time to time, but after this lets make a collective effort to stop, shall we?

Here's how it goes: you find yourself on a congested road that is punctuated with stop lights. You're stopped at a red light behind several other cars when, thank god, the light turns green. The excitement builds as you take your foot off the brake and start to accelerate, yes! You can make it through this green light! But wait... if you go through this green light there won't be space for you to make it through the whole intersection, but if you don't go you'll have to sit through another 5-minute red light. So what the hell, you go. And so do 4 other cars behind you. Now you can't move any further up since the next light is also red, and the people who have a green light to go across the intersection can't because there's 5 cars blocking it. Then, naturally, they honk, and we think to ourselves "Moron, stop honking, where the heck am I supposed to go, I'm stuck here," to which the appropriate response is "Well then you shouldn't have gone in the first place, should you have?" Happens ALL the time.

And it all comes back to the issue of sight. We can SEE the other cars that are driving perpendicular to us waiting to go, and we are all smart enough to know that if we block the intersection, they won't be able to. But that doesn't stop us...

What also doesn't stop us are those signs that say "$200 fine for blocking intersection." Are those a joke? Has anyone actually gotten ticketed for that? Well if you ever do go ahead and and explain to the officer, "You have to understand, how could I see the sign when my vision is clearly compromised? I couldn't even see all those cars I was blocking."