Running Red Lights Is Madness
– By James McFadden –
If you read my Letter from the Editor at the front of this month’s paper, you might have an idea of where I’m heading with my thoughts here.
In life, we all make honest mistakes, like the young man I met a couple of months ago after he unintentionally ran a red light causing a pretty bad accident – and in his case, it truly was an accident. As fate would have it, no one was seriously injured. However, calling most accidents ‘honest mistakes’ cannot be said for the majority of collisions we are seeing at intersections throughout southern Utah. Running red lights has become commonplace and quite honestly, it has in many cases reached epidemic proportions.
“I would also encourage you to go online to our website and share this article on Facebook and encourage your friends to do so as well.”
Running Red Lights: In southern Utah, drivers really do seem to believe, that yellow means hurry up and GO FASTER.
Where the crash pictured in this article was, as I came to believe, an honest mistake. Most collisions, especially in southern Utah, do not even come close to qualifying as accidents. Most of them are the direct result of an intentional decision to ignore the personal safety of others as well as the law.
I can’t imagine what it’s going to take to change this conduct, but one thing is certain. If we don’t get this behavior under control, people are going to continue to senselessly lose their lives to ignorance and arrogance.
So the next time you find yourself falling into this trap as others are disregarding the safety of others ahead of you, I would implore you to slow down and do the right thing. If you do, the life you save might be mine or someone I love.
I would also encourage you to go online to our website and share this article on Facebook and encourage your friends to do so as well. I’m not asking you to do this so we will get more website traffic, I’m asking you to do this because this is a very serious and a very real problem in our area. There really is no justifiable reason for anyone to lose their lives in traffic here. This isn’t Los Angeles or Vegas, It’s southern Utah for god’s sake… So please, make better choices out there.
Be safe, be happy and be smart.
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It’s not just Southern Utah. We just spent 3 weeks in Provo where you will see 3-5 cars running every red light on major roads (ie University Ave in Provo). Incredibly dangerous for cars turning left who are stranded mid-intersection and for those who actually stop at a red light and fear someone crashing into the back their car. We almost had 3 accidents in one day. Be careful out there!