lights red lights green lights
stop lights go lights caution lights
on streets, not on life
Rules of the road.
Stop on red.
Go on green.
Caution, warning, take care, changing soon on yellow.
This works really well at the moment as I drive to work, as I have driven to work for almost half a century and it hasn’t been improved on.
But who is to say this will last?
I always thought that one of the first signs of the final decent for mankind would be a disregard for the basic fairness of a four way stop.
Four way stops work if everyone behaves, shows some respect and follows the rules.
You take your turn.
Sometimes you wait to take your turn.
Once someone decides to not follow the rules, the implied momentary contract between drivers to follow the rules is dissolved and chaos follows.
Roundabouts are the coming better solution to the problem of how to get people to take turns yet I find it difficult to grasp how this is an improvement.
Roundabouts work if everyone behaves, shows some respect and follows the rules.
Proponents state that the data shows that T bone accidents, accidents where cars crash at a 90 degree angle to one another have dropped 95%.
It is data likes this that gives breathe to the concept of lies, damned lies, and statistics.
Most folks think Mark Twain said that but Mr. Twain said that Benjamin Disraeli said it but I digress.
Is it true that T bone accidents dropped 95%?
Yes, you bet.
Is it also true that in a circle, cars are no longer approaching each other at a 90 degree angle making the CHANCE of a T bone accident drop 100%?
Yes, you bet.
Lets go back to the four way stop.
The rule of thumb is that the driver on the right has the right of way.
Makes it easy to remember doesn’t it?
I put it to you that had someone back in time had decided that drivers on the left had the right of way, that culture today would have rejected this as leftist woke theology and four ways stops in Florida would have been outlawed
With round about going counter clockwise, they would have been outlawed as counter culture.
I am not sure what people if Florida would have been left with in the way of traffic control as obviously red lights are pinko, green lights are, well, green and therefore a myth and yellow lights must lead into some sort of peril.
Better to just buy a gun and park the car in the garage is where this line of thinking will take you.
Red lights.
Green lights.
Yellow lights.
Pretty simple stuff.
Until someone decides it isn’t.
Simple as it implies a basic social contract.
We have to agree together to make it work.
Some one will get to the corner first and will have to agree that that is how it is.
Not a lot of interpretation there.
Some one gets to go and someone, well, someone has to wait.
We all have to take our turn to make this work.
Regulated cooperation?
Goodness but that sounds so …
No Haiku For You 