Red Lights Taunt Me So

They do! Those red traffic lights taunt me! I am frequently faced with a moral dilemma. After all, which is smarter? The traffic light or me? But it is not good to entertain such thoughts.

You see, it wasn't always so. There was a time when I was well conditioned not to question the authority of the light. Admittedly, It wasn't the safest conditioning. I subscribed, as many people do, to the interpretation so aptly voiced by Jeff Bridges in the movie Starman. After gunning it through a light, Bridges who plays an alien who learns to drive by observing others says "Red means stop; green means go; and yellow means go very, very fast!"

What pushed me over the edge was ... "the malicious light from hell". Long ago, between my house and the apartment my fiance lived at was a light that would default to red in the direction I had to take. Even with no other traffic in sight in any direction it would be red until I had fully stopped and waited for it to cycle. But that's not the worst of it. I had a 4X4 pickup truck with alloy wheels and good ground clearance. When I stopped at that light in that truck it would ignore me. I tried moving the truck over different areas where I thought the vehicle sensors were. Other cars had no problem. But to shorten the story, one night after sitting for over 10 minutes with no traffic I decided the red light was malicious and with nobody around to see drove through.

So now I question the authority of the light. Not as one of those scoff-laws who barely brakes as they make a right turn through their red light. I still believe in the purpose of the light to safely regulate traffic and can spare some patience in spite of their ineptness. The problem is that I know I'm smarter and more observant than the lights are! And so they taunt me...