My really-really bad day

[Kip Powick]

Remember the speeding thread??? I can beat that, and it happened today. Scuba 02 and I came home from the gym around 1:00 pm and before I changed from flaming purple shorts and a T-shirt emblazoned with, “Jobs are for people who don’t dive” I suggested we move my Buick from beside the house and get ready to put up my “temporary” winter garage.

The Buick was “dead” and it was a brand new battery last week but as I seemed to be having electrical problems with the car I thought it best to take my car to a mechanical wizard that I know about 10km east of my home. We boosted the car, after we pushed it down the lane, with my wife’s car, and I asked her to follow me to my friends and give me a lift back.

No problem she said, but she was going to have a quick shower first. I headed out and then it all started, I’m sure you have driven a road with 2 lanes going each way and at certain stop lites there is an advanced green, but not on your side, on the other side to allow those facing you to turn across in front of you. Well, shouldn’t be a problem as I am in the left lane behind the first car at the lite that does not have the advanced green..

The lite turns green for the guys on the other side and away they go…we wait…. There is an awful lot of traffic coming toward us. Finally we get a green lite and THEN the *&^%^& idiot who was number one in the left lane ahead of me NOW turns on his signal and he wants to turn left across the traffic !!!! We wait…we wait… I check my RH mirror..no traffic so I turn hard RT into the RT lane and start across the intersection…….ahhh made it just as the light goes from AMBER to RED.

A minute later ---ooops---red lights……to Serve and Protect right behind me…let him go by…hey..he is right on my tail…maybe it’s me ..what????? Turn down a street and stop. Walk back to his car… “is there a problem?”

“Sir, you went through a red lite.”

“I did not..the light was amber when I was half way across and then it turned red…did you want me to stop in the middle of the intersection?”

“That’s not the way I saw it.You went through a red lite.”

“No matter what I say, I’m not going to win this… am I??”

“No Sir, drivers licence, ownership, and insurance please”

You guessed it, no drivers licence, it is in my gym bag in my wife’s car and then the questions start,,,why are you in shorts (+3C), don’t you have a jacket, is that your car, why can’t you turn the engine off, where do you live, date of birth etc etc.

“Go sit in your car”

Wait-wait-wait..finally he saunters back to my car, a ticket for the light, and a ticket for no licence BUT they will void the “no licence” if I prove I have one within 72 hours. I go to my friends place and by this time 45 minutes have gone by. Scuba 02 has come and gone and is searching the road for my body. Eventually she comes back..

“Why were you so long getting here? You left 20 minutes before me ?”

“Small problem, with the car”...not wanting to tell her what had happened.

“I went all the way back to the bridge looking for you and all I saw was a cop giving a ticket to some poor driver on a side street.”

Silence-silence-silence

Drove home and on the way I told her I got a ticket. When she stopped laughing I told her I had to use her car to go to the Police Station and show them my licence, which she had now deposited in the house...still in the gym bag. Picked up my licence and headed to the station and returned right at suppertime. It was a quiet supper until Scuba 02 wrinkled her nose and said,

“There must be a skunk in the back yard”

“No , there isn’t”

“Well it smells like there is one”

“Believe me, there is no skunk in the back yard”

“I smell skunk, it must be out there.”

“There is no skunk in the back yard, it is in the front yard…….,I hit a skunk on the way back from the police station with your car.”

(guess who has to wash a little red Geo tomorrow morning??)

[Guest Greener]

From his Young Drivers of Canada...

If your front wheels are over the large white bar, not even the pedestrian lines which are further, and you are impeded from advancing further (as in turning left on a green with oncoming traffic), you may procede through on a amber even if the amber turns to red. You may get a ticket if there is lots of traffic and you went and blocked the intersection though.

Were your tires across the fat white line????

Get that suit cleaned up and contest it!!!

[deicer]

"The lite turns green for the guys on the other side and away they go…we wait…. There is an awful lot of traffic coming toward us. Finally we get a green lite and THEN the *&^%^& idiot who was number one in the left lane ahead of me NOW turns on his signal and he wants to turn left across the traffic !!!! We wait…we wait… I check my RH mirror..no traffic so I turn hard RT into the RT lane and start across the intersection…….ahhh made it just as the light goes from AMBER to RED."

Not intentionally trying to be a PITA, but after what I posted below, IMHO the root cause for this traffic indiscretion was IMPATIENCE.

With what I know of you, I would never suspect that you were a closet Automotive Anarchist.

Thank you for highlighting that patience and safety should always be paramount when conducting an automobile on public roads.

Rgds...

Iceman

[Steam Driven]

One of Calgary's finest tells me the same thing. If your front bumper is accross the stop line before the light turns red, you are legal to proceed.

We had an interesting discussion regarding the red light intersection camera's here in town. They shoot a beam across the stop line when the light turns red. If the beam can not be completed, a car in the intersection on an amber, the system resets and trys again. The beam has to be broken, to result in an infraction.