Seeing Red

Dear City of Fresno and City of Clovis,

You have some shit to answer for. First, thank you for the greatly unnecessary repaving of Shaw Ave. It's not like other streets were in worse disrepair. On to the bullshit: Why in the hell did it take me 15 min to drive 5 miles down Shaw AT FOUR AM?! You assholes forgot to put the sensors in the intersections. I had to wait for every combination of signals to go before me (and some switched back and skipped me all together). I was the only car on the road-literally. Why aren't all lights on Shaw either green or all reds with WORKING SENSORS to auto turn green as I approach? I ran the last red light to turn left onto Cedar and it almost gave me an erection.

Executive decision: I will intentionally run all unnecessary but safe red lights late at night. And I will fight and win any tickets. Thank you.

Love,

Ben Mooneyham

The above is what i just posted in a note on Facebook. Then I remembered I had a blog specifically for complaining about such an occasion. Does anybody else have this problem where they live? It doesn't have to be because the roads are new. Maybe your streets don't have any at all.

This subject has always enraged me and my dad. He brought up a good point once, one I also had! His point was, waiting at stop lights when you shouldn't be pollutes the air more. Cars pollute the most when idling and when first starting up.

I want to see a study. I'm sure NTSB or some damn agency can find numbers on this. I want to see the average (and low and high) times spent at stop lights in any given instance. As in, a number in seconds or minutes that says about how long I will spend at any given stoplight. Next I want to know how many intersections use outdated or malfunctioning light systems (how many don't have sensors). Now I want the numbers on pounds of carbon/sec (or min.) idling cars produce, on average. Let's use averages to be conservative-I'm sure the numbers will still be startling. Finally, lets get the number of cars that are on the road every day. NOW! Let's throw all those numbers and rates into the button thingy with numbers and see how much we as a country pollute every year due to nothing more than in accurate and aging stoplights.

I bet the number would be ridiculously insane. Ridiculous, even.

If you really want to make it a 1 2 punch to the government(?) lets use some of those numbers and calculate how much unnecessary stress is put onto drivers stuck in traffic that is caused only by these lights and how many years we stress away. I've heard hours spent in traffic per lifetime. I'm sure you can multiply the two or something to find yet another number.

On my drive at 4am, when the light cycle went all the way around and skipped me I screamed in my car at the top of my lungs and made my ears ring for a minute. This happened another time shortly before I ran the last light. I cannot stand being in traffic but I generally accept it and try to save my outbursts for the really bad drivers... but I have zero patience for artificial traffic. The entire trip back to work on my lunch break had me seeing red.