by John Graham

Created on: July 16, 2008

I have a great respect for the police. My father was senior officer in the Metropolitan Police and I was at one time going to join the police.

However, they fail in one great respect on the roads. It is one of my pet peeves when I am driving or walking. They do not monitor intersections for red-light offenders.

The most dangerous sections of the roads are intersections and crashes occur there constantly in the United States. The crashes are for a variety of reasons but one of the most pervasive is the driver who ignores the traffic lights. I see it daily, since each day I walk across a main road pushing a stroller carrying my twin daughters.

We wait for the lights and, beyond that, watch the oncoming cars. Many accelerate when they see the amber light and quite a large number ignore the amber and red lights altogether even when the stroller and I are on the crossing under our green. The light is no assurance that we won't be run down.

Part of the problem is that the drivers are incompetent youths because we have a large school nearby, and partly because drivers are more absorbed in some other activity such as chatting on their cell-phones, but part of the blame seems to be the attitude that, "Red lights don't apply to me."

However, my peeve is that the police never attempt to ticket red-light offenders. Instead they hang out along the highway for people exceeding the speed limits. Meanwhile, another crash occurs at another intersection.

The police do not have quotas for the number of tickets they hand out but they are certainly judged by their activity on their shift and this is reflected in the number of tickets they have handed out. Thus, since it's easier for them to find speeders and to stop that person and it's not so easy to monitor an intersection or to ticket drivers going in one of four different directions, they tend to take the easy way. The police emphasize sitting alongside a highway. You can't blame them. Their job and their superior makes them do it.

However, that doesn't make it any easier for the next driver who is hit by someone trying to catch the light at speed.

Presently, I hate to be the first in line waiting for a light to change to green because there is a very good probability that a car coming from the side direction is not going to stop. It often happens, so I make it a practice to be slow off the mark on green. The police are not going to help.

Learn more about this author, John Graham.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.