Originally Posted by
wphamilton
I have the same opinion, and I think I even wrote something similar way back in the BF annals. But two things.
What if we aren’t all obeying them; what if, in fact, those roads are to a high degree lawless? Specifically, people are ignoring the red lights and not just one or two on the stale yellow but significant disregard for the light? As you said, the law won’t work in those conditions. And if drivers randomly blow the light it may actually be safer to proceed in a more empty intersection than to wait for the signal.
And secondly, if it really is dangerous to be stopped at certain intersections because of lawless individuals? The law doesn’t expect us to accept a seriously dangerous situation just to remain in obedience to traffic code. Or even more serious statutes.
Since I don’t know the conditions in New Orleans, and it seems at least plausible given recent history, I have to lend some credence to the description by a native. If true, or even plausible, then it rates at least my reserving judgment on routinely running reds.
WP,
Agreed, as has been noted in other threads most cities/counties/states have laws that allow motor and bicycles to proceed through an intersection after they’ve waited at least one cycle to see if the light is “dead” or not. As even if it isn’t very likely it is within the realm of possibility that a light has been fixed so that it properly detects
ALL forms vehicular traffic.
To the first, I say that “two wrongs don’t make a right.” Or as most of our mothers said to us at one time or another, “if all of your friends jumped off of the Empire State Building, would you?”
To the second, I can totally understand that because of certain individuals that it may not always be safe for people using certain types of vehicles to stop too long in certain neighborhoods. And there are exceptions to most laws that allow people to proceed, such as the aforementioned “dead red” law. But people still have to obey the law(s), or try to get them changed/repealed.
I would have to think that
IF things are so bad in New Orleans that we’d hear more about it on the evening news. I don’t know about you, but I haven’t heard anything on the evening news where I live that would suggest that it is as dangerous to live there as Joey makes it.
He has said/suggested the people are “shooting each other in the streets, over the slightest provocation,” and that because of La’s version of “stand your ground” law that it’s “legal.”
Here in Fl we also have a “stand your ground” law. But even with that law is it is not a “lock” that if John Doe shoots Billy Bob Jones that John Doe will be able to use the “stand your ground” law as a defense.
There is just such a case going through the courts here in Fl right now. It involves a retired police captain who shot an unarmed man in a movie theater for texting and throwing popcorn in his face. In this case given that shooter is a retired police captain, and actually
NOT “
just” a retired police captain, but he is also a former SWAT officer. He more so then anyone should know how to defuse a situation so that resorting to shooting can be avoided.
Plus it has been revealed shortly after the shooting that the shooter had also been texting in the movie theater, and that at least two people have come forward with reports of having run ins with him. In one a person had moved into his neighborhood and was listening to his radio while he was working on his car in his driveway when the retired cop approached him and “ordered” him to turn his radio down. The second was a woman who was texting in a movie theater, possibly the same theater.
What myself and others feel happened is that the shooter having not only been a cop, not only a SWAT cop, but also a retired police captain that he was used to having people obey his orders without question. He just wasn’t/isn’t prepared for life post law enforcement where he no longer has the authority to tell people what to do.
So, I’m sorry, but I do not buy everything that Joey says about life in New Orleans being so dangerous. As if it is I think that we’d have heard about it in the national news, and I would also have to think that if it was so dangerous to live there, that people would be moving away in droves. Again, I don’t know about you, but I haven’t heard any reports of people leaving New Orleans for safer locations.
I do not doubt that sadly, as in any major US city that there aren’t bad neighborhoods, where even the police are “afraid” to go after dark unless they are at least in pairs. But that doesn’t mean that it is a “lawless” city, with people “just” shooting each other in the street with little provocation.