do you stay or do you go?
 

here is the scenario:

you are stopped at a red light, at a four way intersection. it is daytime, clear, sunny. you have a perfect line of sight for at least a half mile in every direction. there are NO cars coming, no one walking or crossing a street, no cars waiting on the other side of the light. you are alone at that intersection. just you, sitting at the red light, waiting for it to change.

do you stay there, sit and wait, or do you go?


this happened to me today. i went. i ran the red light.

this is how i see it. that light is there to help ensure a safe and orderly flow of traffic. clearly there was no one coming, my going forward did not endanger anyone, nor did it obstruct the flow of traffic. there was no traffic other than me.

what would you have done? honestly.

I would have stayed. It has been my driving experience that on the road accidents are called "accidents" because shit happened in a split second.

I would have stayed also. There are times on a motorcycle where the sensors don't "see" the bike and I have to go to the button for the cross walk to make it change.

Ive already done that. I completely agree. I think when there is no other traffic that the a intersection turns into a four way stop. I know the light system is there for a reason, but what is the harm.

+1.

Hell I went last week, and I saw cars on the road a half mile ahead. Nobody died, and nobody would die. I know the light patterns for that intersection and can see if the side lights are red or green. I feel neither guilt or concern from breaking such a simple/blind traffic law.

A lot of driving comes from habit. Things like covering your brake pedal, checking blind spots, even (especially) emergency maneuvers -- they're things you need to do reflexively, and not have to think about.

I stay, because I don't want to get into the habit of thinking that running a red light is safe under any circumstances. My life is not so hectic that I can't spare the 90 seconds.

+1

I would go, and maybe stop in the middle and give a finger to the camera on the top of the light.

Traffic cameras don't care if nothing is coming. To me though, Traffic lights are glorified Stop signs. I stay at lights though. Ya never know when a cop is hiding and watching, especially when there's a long red light with low traffic.

This is, by and large, totally different in different countries... or localities.

In Finland, it could be 4am, with not a soul in sight, yet the little red man who says "Don't Walk" holds sway over the mortal men within it's range. He will reap revenge upon all those who dare to question His authority. In Turkey, for example, a red light is deemed to be merely advisory and not particularly reliable, or at least it's viewed as such. Bumper-to-bumper (fender-to-fender?) is also the preferred distance between cars.

Going around the different countries in Europe and living there, it's damned interesting to see the answers to these sorts of questions that people come up with in their everyday existence, en masse. From those judgements to take an idea of how process driven they are, whether they're biased toward societal concerns or fierce individuality... etc, etc.

Being pretty typically British, It depends on how active I'm feeling. If I want to pay particular attention and take risks in an environment that i'm very confident is consequence-free, then I might run the red light(not entirely Turkish), or cross when the little red man threatens to sexually abuse my children if i disobey. If I'm feeling a little less adventurous, or there are things I just can't judge, then I'd prefer to hide in the system, but not trust it entirely(not entirely Finnish).

I think, from what I saw of it, the Dutch have the blend pretty much right to my mind. Bloody Calvinists.

i only ever ran it once.

i was sitting at the lights for 5 mins. a T intersection. didnt see a soul in all that time. it was midnight and the traffic machine box obviously didnt pick up that i was there. i rolled back and forward to get it to register my presense to no avail.

in the end i went because i could have been there for 15 minutes and it wouldnt have registered. not a smart move, but necessary

edit: just to add, that here in dubai, if you run a red light, your car gets impounded for a month. you do it the second time and you spend time in jail. no body runs red lights here!

...i stay until i feel like a complete fool...and then i go

I wait. Luckily, here most of the intersections are on sensors and they're fairly sensitive (they pick up my bicycle in the bike lane), so you never have to wait for long.

it was kind of a trip to read this because this happened to me about 15 years ago, only difference being, it was 3:30 in the morning, and I had just gotten off work at a bar where the majority of the clientele were policemen.
So, I was tired, after a long shift, stocking the beer coolers and making the bar ready for the morning shift, and I am driving home, and come to a red light, same as you, I can see in both directions for blocks, I mean its 3:30 in the morning, not many cars on the road. So, after backing up a few times to try to trigger the light, waiting for what I thought was a fairly long time, not seeing another car in sight, I ran the red light. As soon as I got onto the blvd, I saw the red lights behind me, pulled over, (I have no idea where he came from, it was eerie) He wrote me a ticket, and I went home.
That night when I went to work, I was explaining to the cops sitting at the bar that I had got a ticket the night before going home from work. They were mainly vice cops, not patrolmen. So, they all started laughing, and asked to see the ticket. I showed it to them, and they were getting a big kick out of saying, how they knew the guy that gave me the ticket, and they would take care of it. I asked what they meant, and they said for me not to worry about it, they would handle it. They took the ticket, and told me in the next few days, that it was all taken care of and not to worry about it any longer. So, I believed them.
Fast forward 4 or 5 months, I get pulled over for speeding, and got arrested for a warrant, for not appearing in court on a ticket for running a red light.
I got out the next morning, and was very ticked at the guys that told me they had taken care of the ticket.
I had a court date to appear for the warrant, but decided to go to the district attorney with my story.
I went to the courthouse and asked who I would speak to about this, they directed me to his office, i told him exactly what had happened and named names of all the vice cops involved, in telling me they would take care of the ticket, and that was why I did not appear for the red light ticket, and he threw the whole thing out, and that was the end of it.
Except for the way I told the vice cops off, the next time I had to work, they were terrible customers anyway. They all drank something on the rocks, scotch, or whisky, and they would lay their service revolvers on the bar the drunker they got. Always bugging me to tell them conversations I heard between people at the bar planning crimes. WHAT?? They never wanted to leave at 2, thinking they were above the law, They used to buy six packs of beer and go out back and drink the beer and throw the beer cans in the air and shoot them with their guns. Just a real joy. and it wasn't just a handful, it was up to 15 of them at any given time in the bar. I know they have rough jobs, but they made mine a nightmare at times.

I do it all the time. There is a light near my house that doesn't have a timer on it. You could pull up at 2 in the morning and wait 2 minutes for it to change.

I can see for a mile in either direction and if I see nothing I go. Even asked a cop one time if that was illegal and he told me that as long as it is safe to proceed with no sign of any traffic anywhere, a red light is virtually a stop sign.

I would say I am an exception to the majority of the portuguese. Here, people run red lights quite often. When they are just changing is the main moment. People also drive close up, not quite bumper to bumper but pretty close. I can do that quite well, it just becomes a habit. But I choose to signal when there are no cars in sight (most people here don't signal even on a road full of cars - it makes you good at guessing other drivers' next move - i.e. he's veering off towards your lane, probably going to slide on in, yep, there ya go), and I don't run red lights. They change after x time, no sensors here. As far as I gather, in the US you can't roll by stop signs too easily. Here people do it all the time, no big deal. People also jaywalk like nuts and rarely respect the red light at crossings. I stop for red lights at crossings because I was hit by a car on a crossing once (even though there were no lights). Sometimes it's safer to jaywalk. The parking here is also mad, and we have crazy narrow streets. We are the European country with the highest number of road accidents I believe. All I can say for myself is that I've never had a serious accident in over 10 years of driving.

I have a long light at the end of my neighbourhood that I encounter all the time - I want to turn left usually but it is a 2 minute wait, so sometimes I'll turn right and then do a u-turn when there is no traffic around. Same thing and legal-ish.

Funny, I actually came back to post that this is what would do most of the time.

HOW TO CHANGE A RED LIGHT TO GREEN (for motorcycles & small cars):
...there is a wire buried under the pavement in the middle of the street near the stopline that senses a change in frequency to the electromagnetic field. Small cars and motorcycles just don't have enough to mass trigger it.

...here's what to do: Buy 2 Neodymium magnets (pulls 6 lbs) and some heavy duty mounting tape. Attach the tape to the magnets then apply them to the bottom of the motorcycle perpendicular to the road.

...i hope that helps

Well, you know, "great minds" and all that ...

;)

i just don't see blindly obeying a machine when there is no common sense reason to. those of you who say you would stay have given good reasons for staying, and i respect that and i can see where you are coming from. i've asked this question to a few people, they all say "i would stay." i ask why, they say "because its a red light." that's the only reason they could come up with. it kinda scares me when people freely admit they don't think for themselves, they do things because that is what they are told, and think that is ok and there is nothing wrong with it.

Well for me I figure, whats the rush? If the light will turn green then just wait the 15 seconds.

I don't because the first time I do I will get a ticket. That's my luck. Nobody around for a mile in each direction and the moment I cross that red light I will get a ticket. No way am I chancing it.

I stay.

I'm young. I've got time.

Wow, this is true, great minds DO think alike .... and apparently so do you and noodle. :D:p

I stay. I've seen a car going 85 in a 30 come from out of sight to ripping a car in half in the blink of an eye. If it's really been so long and there's so little traffic, I'll get out of my car and look to see that no traffic is coming before moving.

Same here.

I would stay - I am also a ridiculously pedantic driver though, probably because of friends who have been severely injured in accidents involving drunk drivers or people running red lights

Just a warning for you if you're in Australia don't try this - alot of the sets of traffic lights here have cameras that take photoes every second during red lights to catch people running them.

hyacinthe

i'll be in oz in a few weeks...it was never like that in sydney a few months back

or is this only like that on the west coast?

I'd probably stay. As long as I have nowhere to go, I like being in the car. I buy new music every week, and a car ride is pretty much the best time to listen to them.

Mind you, if it's taking longer than a couple minutes for the lights to change, and I was certain that no one was coming, I'd go.

I stay. It would be my luck some little old lady was in the intersection that I didn't see, even after looking 50 times or something similar.

We have red light cameras here too, but only at what are deemed "dangerous" intersections.

If I go, there will be trouble. But if I stay, it will be double.




Two minutes, fine, I'll wait. More than that, and I'm going. I don't like to sit still too long.

so, c'mon and let me know. would you stay or would you go?

---------- Post added at 11:58 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:57 AM ----------

oh, you did tell me

I had this problem years ago riding home late at night on a motorcycle. I even did the crosswalk button push every now and then. Finally, I asked a cop about it. He said that as long as I gave the light 90 seconds before taking off, he wouldn't bother giving me a ticket.

What frustrated me even more than red lights were the stupid "left turn on arrow only" lights when I lived in Houston. I don't know how many hours I wasted at green lights, unable to turn left because I didn't have the arrow, even though I was the only vehicle within a mile of the light.

I mean . . . . right on red - okay; left on green - not okay?

No man, left on green only if the intersection does not have an arrow indicating otherwise. If there are no turn lights, even duriing the day I creep forward on a standard green light and make a left turn as soon as I can. But if there is a turn light and it says stop, you stop.

I don't run into this problem frequently. I typically stay. The town where I learned to drive had numerous blind intersections, I could rarely see several blocks ahead.

I recall one instance at 6am on a Sunday morning that I was stuck at an intersection with a red light for fifteen minutes (I timed it). Eventually I had enough. I went when it was red. This was a blind intersection. I felt I was taking a risk because I could not see potential cross-traffic. A cop was in a car across the street watching me when I went and didn't do anything about it. I looked in my rear-view mirror as I drove away and saw the light turn green. Still puzzling over that one.

i usually go out...