Don't Follow the Lights

If you're a fan of the Lord of the Rings series, or even just seen one of the movies, you are familiar with Gollum, the perverted, desecrated, hobbit-like creature whose single-minded fixation on the one ring largely drives the story of The Lord of the Rings. On the surface, there might not seem to be any parallels between those movies and driving, but there is at least one, and it occurs in the scene above, where Gollum leads Frodo and Sam through The Dead Marshes on the way to The Black Gate, which is the entrance to the evil land of Mordor, where Frodo and Sam have to venture to destroy the one ring to save all of Middle Earth. While in the Dead Marshes, Gollum warns Sam and Frodo to not follow the lights, as those lights are made from those who died in those marshes thousands of years ago in a great battle.

These dead, like the gentleman above, lure unsuspecting travelers into the marsh so they can kill them and keep them in the marsh for eternity. That is why Gollum warns Sam and Frodo to not follow the lights, as following, and therefore, trusting the lights will ultimately lead to their deaths.  Me being the driving education focused guy that I am, this scene reminded me of yellow lights. Why yellow lights you might ask? It is because, like our lovely undead/dead friend above, they tempt you to follow them with promises of it won't turn red before I'm through, or I have time to make it, or everyone in the intersection will stop for me if I go? Of course we know that those temptations turn out to be more untrue than true many times. Here's why.

Here is your average yellow light:

Nothing too special, nothing noteworthy. But the real issue isn't the light, it's what it represents, and that is uncertainty. The purpose of a yellow light is to warn you that a red light is coming, but apart from that, you are given nothing but questions. How long will that light stay yellow? Do you have five seconds between the beginning of yellow and the beginning of red? Do you have just one second between the beginning of yellow and the beginning of red? Can you make it at the speed you're going? Should you speed up, hit your brakes, slow down? I've seen  every scenario you can imagine regarding yellow lights on city streets. I've literally seen a streetlight in Glendale, Arizona go green, yellow, red, just as quickly as it took you to read this sentence. I've seen others that literally took ten to fifteen seconds between the yellow light coming on and the red light coming on. The bottom line is that there is no way to tell how long a yellow is going to stay yellow, so the bottom line is do not trust them. I'm sure you've heard the old saying that green is for go, red is for stop, yellow is for going really fast, but be careful around yellow lights. They are great warnings of a red light approaching, but they can lure you in to a false sense of security.  The next article will go in to more detail about how you can tell when it's safe to go or when you should brake and assume the light is going to turn red the next instant. But bottom line, you should treat all yellow lights as the uncertain things they are, and with all uncertain things, they should be afforded as little trust as possible, because more often than not, trusting in a yellow light to stay yellow for as long as you think it might is a recipe for disaster. Until next time...