May 15, 2002
The excuses and explanations for "eterna-lights" those long traffic lights that keep you sitting there seemingly forever get more and more comical all the time. Traffic engineers have more excuses than an Enron executive for keeping people trapped behind the red light while everybody else in the world gets to go, and since we can't do much, legally, to fight them, the only recourse left is to turn their abuse of power to our advantage.
My coping techniques started with shouted obscenities, but I've mellowed in my middle age. I roll down the driver's side window, then shut off the engine and leave the key in the "accessory" position so I can keep the tunes coming out of the CD player. This way, I save gas and help preserve the environment. I suspect that most traffic engineers own oil stocks, so this is one way to ensure they don't get excessively wealthy at our expense. And music has charms to tame the savage driver.
Another technique that can while away the hours at the light is to bring something to read. I have found that when I have a magazine or newspaper in the car, the number of green lights I hit is directly proportional to how much I want to read an article in a publication on the seat next to me. Books with short chapters make great reading at a long light, too.
There are disadvantages to traffic-light reading, though. For one thing, if, by some awesome miracle the light actually turns green and you don't notice because you're engrossed in an article, the people behind you tend to get somewhat testy. And if you're far enough back, you may miss that light and have to wait for the next green light, this time at the front of the line.
A neighbor of mine who was a Palm Beach County sheriff's deputy told me once that taking a shortcut across a parking lot to avoid stopping at a red light was the same as running a red light, so I never tried it, but at one light I always missed and ended up spending several minutes at, I found a way around it.
This was one of those left-turn signals that wasn't always triggered. Five minutes may not seem like a long time, but it's time you never get back, and I would continue through the green light for straight-ahead traffic, make a U-turn a half-mile beyond the intersection, and then turn right on the red light after stopping.
That time I saved added up over the years, and I wasted it on what I wanted, not what some traffic engineer wanted.
When it comes to traffic lights, small victories are the ones best remembered, like the times you get to a light just as it changes to green or you come to a green light and it stays green as you pass through the intersection. On those days, the sun's a little brighter and you can bask in the accomplishment that this time, in the eternal struggle of humanity vs. the traffic light, the humans won.
Vincent F. Safuto is a copy editor for the Press Journal. Reach him at vincent.safuto@scripps.com.
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