Here is a question that I have begun asking people. When I first posed the question I thought it was a no-brainer, but I was surprised to find how many people thought differently. I was also surprised by how emotional people got about the topic when you discuss the answers in depth.
It goes like this: You are driving through a big open desert where the visibility is excellent; you can see for miles and miles in all directions. You come to an intersection with a stop sign. You could see this intersection for miles in advance, as you can see for miles that there are no cars coming from any other direction and none behind you. There are no low shrubs, ditches, or billboards behind which a police officer could be hiding. You are certain you are the only person around. Do you stop?
For those of you that say "yes", let's say it is a traffic light. Would you wait for it to turn green? How long would you wait?
3 comments:
"Whoo! Sign, sign.
Everywhere a sign.
Blockin' out the scenery.
Breakin' my mind.
Do this. Don't do that.
Can't you read the sign?"
No, I don't stop, I don't even slow down. I suppose if it were at night I'd kill the lights for a few seconds to see if I could see any other approaching headlights; but that would be out of force of habit more than out of any undo sense of caution, caused by a superflous sign in the desert.
I don't "drink Coke" every time I see a sign, I don't "smoke Luckies", and I don't leave the building every time I see an exit sign.
I just had an idea! I think red lights in the desert are a great idea. Note that I said "red lights",,,,,,not "green lights". If there were red lights in the desert at regular intervals we would have regular opportunities to get rid of all the unthinking imbeciles that we would otherwise be threading our way through.
I too, have a question: If there is a sign that says "slower traffic stay right" and I'm the only car on the road, and my speedometer is reading three digits, do I have to "stay right"?
Goodness! Of course you stop! How else is Wile E. Coyote supposed to spring his trap?!?!?
Okay… realistically, if that happened to me, I would stop the first time, scratch my head as I looked around, take a picture of it, and then be on my way. (I would send the picture to you). I would stop because I am not familiar with the road and I have not run into a situation a stop sign was put in place for no reason. If I determine that there was indeed no reason for the sign to be there, I would not stop when I ran into that same sign.
Everytime I read your blog, I think about this and you're right, it's a no brainer. Of course I would stop. Maybe it's a British thing but I feel that if you were arriving at this for the first time, how could you know that there's nothing coming. Unless you were driving downhill, can you really be so arrogant that you could claim you would see it? Hmmm. What if you got it wrong? What would the consequences be?
Mind you the second time that I drove along, I would probably go through. Or maybe the third time. Amy, my wife, says she would never stop. Its America. It's a trap. They're going to murder you!
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