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48 thoughts on “I am besieged by red lights”

  1. martinmc

    If I get in a line at the grocery store, it will immediately become the slowest register in the entire store.

  3. joey5slice

    I am always in the slowest traffic lane. The only time the lane next to mine becomes slower is immediately after I switch into it.

  5. ruralhobo

    The French left just won the elections. Actually, they did indeed, and the far right to general jawdropping came in third thanks to a historic turnout. But the left can't govern without the center so maybe it won't be true they "won". We'll see how the horse trading goes. For now it's party time here in France. This is the tsunami equivalent of a blowout victory for Dems in the US when all the polls predicted a Maga wave.

  6. cephalopod

    Parent version: any night you think you can get away with staying up late, your child will wake up in the wee hours violently ill, and you'll end up with almost no sleep instead of the 4 hours you would have gotten if you'd gone to bed on time.

  7. coynedj

    I'm a perfect driver. It's everyone else who drives like maniacs.

    I'm still reasonably well up to date on new technology.

  9. Chondrite23

    Thank you for taking all the red lights. Yesterday I blew through my little town hitting about eight greens in a row. It all evens out in the end.

    1. kaleberg

      Even small towns try to synchronize their lights nowadays. If you happen to hit them at the right time of day, you can cruise green to green. If you are running against the flow, you'll get red after red. It's rough on pedestrians too. The relative speed of pedestrians and cars means that letting cars cruise through multiple greens makes pedestrians get stuck at red after red. This is true in Seattle and New York City at least, so odds are it is just the speed ratio.

  11. jayrwasdf

    Monty Python has already addressed this!

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbRyH6fkee0
    Monty Python "I like traffic lights"
    I Like traffic lights
    I Like traffic lights
    I Like traffic lights
    No matter where they've been
    I Like traffic lights
    I Like traffic lights
    I Like traffic lights
    I Like traffic lights
    I Like traffic lights
    But only when they're Green

  13. Vog46

    In my city the light "timing" is adjusted during the day
    So traffic can flow in/out more efficiently
    It seems to work for us

  15. Citizen99

    Sorry, Kevin. It's because I sold my soul to Satan in return for getting all green lights as long as I live. Little did I know how it would affect you.

  17. miao

    I get (nearly) all red lights, while my wife gets (nearly) all green ones.

    But I have a fond memory of one evening back in about 1984 getting 11 greens in a row.

  18. gvahut

    I would say you are either driving too fast or too slow, driving at the wrong time, or driving in the wrong places. I think that covers it.

  19. DarkBrandon

    - Women who can barely stand the sight of men are the only ones who will ever approach me, irresistibly drawn to me because they have "finally found somebody decent."
    - Any cash savings accumulated painstakingly over a year or two will be consumed by a cascade of vet bills reaching into 5 figures.

  21. Dana Decker

    We're talking traffic lights, right?

    Kevin is correct. I have noticed that over the last 25 years that traffic lights are not timed they way they used to. In the past, driving at a steady 30 mph allowed you, once you get the green, to encounter several green lights in a row.

    Whether due to laziness, incompetence, *or to deliberately slow traffic*, it's worse now than before.

  25. D_Ohrk_E1

    It entirely depends on what a local jurisdiction's traffic priority is (bus, cars, bikes, pedestrians, traffic safety, travel times), what time of the day you're driving, and how many of its traffic signals are synchronized with each other.

  26. ProbStat

    Reminds me of the joke about the guy driving with a friend and needing to get gas, so he insists upon going to a particular gas station.

    "Are you still having the contest?"

    "Yes, sure."

    "And can you tell me how it works?"

    "If you fill up your tank, you get to guess a number between 1 and 10. And if you guess right, you win the prize."

    "And the prize is -- ?"

    "Free sex."

    "Great!"

    So he fills up, and then asks to participate in the contest

    "OK. I'm thinking of a number between 1 and 10. What do you think it is?"

    "8!"

    "No, I'm sorry: it's 3."

    So they drive off, and the friend tells the driver it's got to be a scam: the number can just change even if you guess right.

    "No way!" the driver responds. "My wife won three times last month!"

  28. shapeofsociety

    Emotion memory bias: things that trigger an emotion are more memorable than things that don't. Red light = annoyance = memorable. Green light = no emotion = not memorable.

  29. illilillili

    > I get way more red lights than I should

    There's nothing to argue about here. Simply look at the amount of time an intersection is empty. Apparently the time spent waiting for a red light can be reduced on the order of 25-30%.

  30. kaleberg

    Ages ago, I took a probability class where we proved that if bus arrival is Poisson process, then odds are that no one has to wait longer for a bus than you do. There was a lot of integration of probability densities, but there i am ... waiting for a bus.

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