Justice and misplaced blame

Believe it or not, this is not a political post. It has to do with perceptions. This morning on my way to work, I was driving along fine with the cruise control on, just making my way. As i got closer to the stoplight, a car came up from a side street and triggered the light to go yellow, then red for me. I found myself thinking that the other driver who was crossing my street with his green light was a jerk, and then i stopped myself and thought about it. It used to be that lights on streets were just on a schedule, you could sometimes even "time" the lights so that you could glide through without ever hitting a red one. As a matter of fact, regardless of the cross traffic, if the light turned red on you, you always blamed the light. "Stupid Light" you would say. And you would wait your turn and go and forget about it all. Now we have the era of the sensor controlled light, which only turns red if another car has approached the intersection from the side street. Instead of blaming the light, like we used to, we now blame the other car for our delay in getting from A to B. Again, misplaced blame on the other driver, it isnt their fault that the light was triggered, they just wanted to get where they are going too. Just something I noticed on my way into work this morning.

This past weekend, justice was served to a driver of a Jeep Cherokee. On our way home on Saturday from my niece's 8th birthday party, we were overtaken and pretty much blown off the road by a guy driving a Jeep way too fast on Highway 37 just north of our home town. And you know how you always say, where's a cop when you need one? Well one showed up this time. A sheriff was driving his car on the opposite side of the road, and as soon as the Jeep went by, he made a U-turn, and began his pursuit. It didnt take long before that Jeep driver was seeing blue and red in his rear view, and as a side note, has anyone else noticed how much BRIGHTER those lights are now? As we drove past, justice was being served, much to our delight. It isnt often that you see it first-hand.