Wednesday, May 26, 2010

The Light of Meaning


I only live about two kilometres from where I work. Nevertheless I encounter 11 sets of traffic lights on the journey to and from work.


Growing up I thought I had my head around how traffic lights worked. Red means you stop. Green means you go. Orange means go faster.

Yes, my father was a lunatic uninsurable driver. We used to go on vacations and wonder at what point: a) the car would break down, and b) how serious the crash was going to be.

This is a man who once drove into a bridge. I mean a bridge! It’s not like it jumped out in front of him.

My mother would sit in the front passenger seat with a death grip on the dashboard and occasionally yelp: “MIND!” as my father wound out the straight six to squeeze past some hapless victim who just happened to be in front of us.

In the days before speed cameras there used to be speed trains as well. This was where one driver would take the punt that there were no cops on the road up ahead and floor it. Then all the drivers behind would think: “Well, they can only catch one of us” and follow the fast guy.

Right, back to the point.

I was a bit surprised to discover that red means stop, green means go, and orange means stop if you can do so safely before you reach the intersection. I always follow this rule. I also know that it’s technically called “amber”, but Amber is a girl’s name, not a bloody colour. It’s orange, OK?

Now, what I can’t work out is what happened to the other people who sat and passed their driver’s license test and are presumably privy to this knowledge.

It seems we all fall into one of these categories:


  1. I’ll stop when it goes orange, if I can do so before entering the intersection.

  2. If it goes orange and I’m reasonably close, I’ll floor it to get through the intersection lest I have to lose two minutes of my life stationary and watching traffic.

  3. If I floor it now I might get to the intersection in time to catch the orange light.

  4. It’s red, but the cars stopped at the just-turned-green light haven’t had a chance to move yet, so I can get through without getting hit.

And I saw all of these on the way to work this morning. Despite numerous ads on TV warning about intersections and the city publicly announcing the installation of red-light cameras, people still run the risk.


I only have one word for them: Morons.

2 comments:

  1. Light of meaning? How about meaning of light? Here's the philosophy I follow:

    To do is to be. -Descartes
    To be is to do. -Voltaire
    Do be do be do. -Frank Sinatra

    Please remember this quote when you pull up to a bright red Lamborghini with beautiful young blond behind the wheel at your next red light!

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  2. coming from down South i have found that in most busy Wellington intersections, orange means 'floor it'. Also buses act like cows in India - its their road baby :)

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