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Dear Philadelphia Motorists:
A red light is not a polite suggestion.
A coworker of mine was hit by a car about a year ago. I don't really know all the details of the accident. What I do know is that one of his legs was more or less completely shattered, and that he now has a steel rod where his bone should be. He is lucky he can walk at all now, and he'll never be able to do so without a limp. Whether or not his accident was because of a driver running a red light (I really don't know), it illustrates a very important point: your car weighs thousands of pounds; your average pedestrian or cyclist weighs under 250. Even travelling at a street-legal 30MPH (and you know you speed up Broad Street way faster than that), that means you're behind the wheel of a deadly weapon.
Philadelphia, at least when you're on the grid, is a very pedestrian city – I don't mean that in the insulting way. Pedestrians, according to the law, have the right of way. So when you're travelling north on Broad (I'm using it as an example because people—myself included—seem to speed more on wider streets) and you blaze through an intersection, willfully ignorant of the fact that the yellow light turned red three cars in front of you, you're actually very much at risk of plowing over a pedestrian who assumed that you'd stop when you hit the light – because that is the law.
But even when there aren't any pedestrians on the road, you should still be mindful of changing lights. I saw a rather serious two-car accident a few months ago that would have been prevented by a little more awareness on the part of both drivers. The accident happened at one of those rare intersections (rare for Philadelphia, at least) where a separate light controls the left turn lane. A car in the turn lane opposite us decided to follow the few cars turning in front of it through the yellow, and then red, light. As the light turned green for us, the straight-going car at the front of the pack switched from brake to accelerator and slammed into the nose of the final turning car. Should the driver of the second car have been paying more attention? Absofuckinglutely. But by law, he wasn't doing anything wrong. Even though the other car was hit, its driver would be held responsible for the crash, as he ran the red light. Everyone appeared unscathed at the scene of the accident, but had the turning car been a few seconds quicker, or the other car been a few seconds slower, the results might have been devastating.
I know, I know. Philadelphia is a relatively fast-paced city. We all have places to be. But waiting at a red light is only going to take up a few moments of your time, in the grand scheme of things. And really, wouldn't you rather be late than at fault for doing someone lifelong injury – especially if it's yourself?
On the flip side:
Dear Philadelphia Police Department:
Why aren't you enforcing moving violations? I can't count the number of times that I've watched PPD officers watch as not one, not two, but four or five cars (and the occasional SEPTA bus!) roll through a red light. We've had a rash of serious gun violence this year, and it definitely needs to be curbed – but when you're dispatched to traffic patrol instead of patrolling the streets, it would be helpful if you, I don't know, patrolled traffic.
Image via Spokane7.com.
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SO TRUE!!!
The same thing goes for stop signs--people here seem to think that rolling through them right after the person in front of them went is A-OK. They "forget" (I'm being polite) that you have to WAIT YOUR TURN, JACKASS (I'm not being polite now).
And please, try not to cream the folks on bikes! Really, it's not cool.