Traffic Lights…

Is it just me, or has the Highway Code been revised to say red traffic lights are now ‘Stop if you feel like it’? When I learnt to drive, if a light turned yellow (or amber as the more pedantic readers would correct me) as you were approaching it, you stopped. [I’ll get the current Highway Code out one of these days to find the exact wording. Ed]

There’s always been the tosser in a Beemer or Hot Hatch screaming towards a set of lights as they were amberising, and gone through just after they have turned red. But over the last few years, it’s become almost compulsary to accelerate to make sure you get through, even if it means you go through after it has turned red.

First it was just the aforementioned Beemers etc I would see doing it, then it was more sedate drivers, taxi drivers [swap those last two around, I think. Ed], even buses, and bloody police cars. If they don’t uphold the letter of the law, who will. (I can almost hear the cries of ‘you naive thing’ after that one!)

The two local sets of lights I can recommend are first – Preston Circus, both northbound, and the southbound right turn filter lane into New England Road, and second – Ditchling Road/Upper Lewes Road junction, mainly southbound, but a northbound driver nearly hit me after I came out of Upper Lewes Road after my light had turned green, having gone through his light long, after it had turned red. It was a company car – I should have let him hit me. Let’s see who is in the wrong there, sunshine.

 

An extract from the Highway Code.

And don’t get me started on bloody cyclists.  I’ll save that for another day.

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