Monday, July 13, 2009

Lawless cyclists? Who is throwing the stones?

Had an interesting day yesterday. I course marshaled the Tour de Los Alamos at the Vehicle Access Portals south of the Omega Bridge from 8:30 a.m. to about 1 p.m.

During that time I had abundant opportunity to watch motorists. I would qualitatively estimate that at least half and probably closer to two-thirds blew the blinking red light when making the right turn from Jemez into the VAP area. Some even did this with a cop stationed at the light. Some barely slowed down.

One guy who I stopped looked at me in disbelief when I asked him why he ran a stop sign. Guess he forgot what a blinking red means:

A flashing RED traffic light means the same as a stop sign. You must come to a full stop and then may proceed when it is safe to do so.

So next time someone tries to single out cyclists as being particularly averse to obeying the law, I suggest they not throw too many stones. The problem is bigger than cyclists.

Just wish I had an assistant with a laptop to write all the numbers down.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think the problem is that everyone seems to think they need to be in a great big hurry to go wherever it is they happen to be going.

Khal said...

My wife has conjectured that Bobby Darin sang everything so fast because he knew that with his weakened heart (from childhood rheumatic fever), he had to cram everything into a life he knew would be short. At least he had an excuse.