How Asylum Inmates Designed Twin Falls Traffic Lights

There are days I wait at red lights and wonder why I’m waiting.  In winter, there’s an intersection I pass through at Pole Line Road.  The light flashes green.  If it’s slippery, the light is red before I clear the intersection.  On summer days, the light changes to yellow even before I pass through.

Sunday morning, I drove down North College Road and reached a red light.  I intended to take a left turn on Washington Street.  A car came from the opposite direction.  He apparently got an arrow and turned on Washington Street going north.  I sat.  Then the light flashed green on Washington Street.  I got a great view of a handful of cars going north and south for what seemed like an eternity.

Tell me something, did the engineers sketch this system with Crayola?

On the very same morning, my sister sent me a link from a publication called Vice.  It’s a story about an Oregon man who sued after his wife got a ticket and he believed she didn’t get the time to clear the intersection.  A camera photographed her car and an automated coupon went out in the mail (it’s how these things work under totalitarian regimes).

When he presented his own studies to make her case, he was fined for not being a licensed engineer.  The totalitarians wanted his silence.

Then something amazing happened.  A court sided with the guy.  Then engineers reviewing his work concluded he had come up with a better traffic light system.

Maybe someone in Southern Idaho will get word about his research.  I sure as heck hope so.  I’m growing old waiting alone at lights.