Blinking Red Light Means Stop, Moron
Idiocy Meter
Asshole Meter
The squat little witch driving what I think is a Mazda 626 clearly didn’t know that a blinking red traffic light is the same thing as a stop sign. I was driving next to her on Hollywood Way in Burbank when we came across such a signal by a pedestrian crosswalk. Every driver should at least know that they must stop for pedestrians in a crosswalk, though many in L.A. either choose not to or don’t happen to see the pedestrians directly in front of their car. Regardless, drivers in these parts are a bit better than the ones on the West Side, and the cars ahead of us stopped until the people exited the crosswalk. Now the light was still blinking red, rather than a solid green; and it pains me to spell this out, but this means that you’re still supposed to come to a stop by the limit line at the pedestrian crosswalk before proceeding forward, even if there aren’t any people in the crosswalk. The drivers directly in front of us came to a complete stop, but this moron to my left didn’t even slow down and just ran right through. I shouldn’t be surprised, right? After all, we all live in a city where too many drivers feel they’ve met their obligations at stop sign intersections by merely stopping behind a car that has stopped for a stop sign. And matters would be even worse if this lady knew that she blew through a blinking red light and just didn’t care, since there weren’t any pedestrians in the crosswalk. At least throw me a bone and slow to a California Roll. Traffic laws tend to be pretty clear; no where does it say “you don’t have to stop for a blinking red light regulating a pedestrian crosswalk if there are no pedestrians in the crosswalk”. What’s the big deal? Was this particular scenario reckless and dangerous? I think we can all agree that saying so would be a tad extreme. However, the mentality behind such driving behavior is definitely cause for concern, since the likelihood of this driver doing something much worse is higher than the average, law-abiding commuter.
Filed under: aggressive, clueless, observation
| Add to del.icio.us | Digg it | reddit | StumbleUpon | Yahoo MyWeb |
I totally agree. While this single act may not be a big deal, I have to wonder about the general lack of character drivers of this must exhibit on a daily basis.
Well, technically a blinking light means treat it as a 4 way stop. She treated it as her version of a 4 way stop, lol!
I experience these type of selfish drivers too often.
I really love the ones who think that if they simply quickly ride up behind the person who stopped in front of them and do a fake stop — not even a California Roll, but what amounts to a quick jaunt forward, quick step (more like a tap) on the brakes — they think that entitles them to go through the intersection, the other people on the other sides of the four-way “manual stop” intersection be damned.
Then, of course, there are those people who don’t stop at all, sigh…..