The Blinking Light Phenomenon

I have always been fascinated by the ability of a blinking light to bring the most intellectual people to the verge of drooling. We see it all the time. The police use blinking lights to get our attention and make us dumb enough to confess to whatever it is they say we were doing to make them pull us over, stores use it to make us buy things we would laugh at someone else for purchasing, lighthouses use them to make us sail blindly into rocks and shallow reefs. It seems that any time we are faced with a blinking light that our brain takes a temporary vacation.

There is nowhere that I find this more annoying than at a broken traffic signal. Any time I see a blinking stop light I dread approaching the intersection. People will sit there for eons with this look upon their face that clearly indicates their feelings of betrayal that a light which has told them day in and day out just what they should do with their cars has now forsaken them.

Today I was pulling up to one such intersection and that familiar feeling set upon me. There was an SUV in the lane beside me and we reached the intersection together. As we came to a stop the “left hand turners” going the direction opposite us were just clearing the intersection leaving one vehicle sitting there waiting to go straight ahead. It was clearly his turn. Not only was he at the intersection before us but he was the only other car there and he was to our right hand side (I can see my driving instructor beaming with pride that I actually read my driver’s handbook.) The driver of the SUV and I were both sitting there staring down the other driver and waving him on. His response was to sit there and look back at us so I did the logical thing and after a good 10 or 15 seconds of just sitting there I took my foot off the brake and hit the gas. This, of course, was the opposing drivers cue to do the same. Thankfully his brain awoke from it’s blinking-red-light induced stupor and he stopped before our cars became one with each other.

It’s the perfect time of the year to send cash, checks or money orders to the owner of this blog.

Sorry, my bad, go back about your business.