Who knew that the average driver could get his hands on the same signal-changing gadgets that emergency crews use to zip through intersections on their way to, well, an emergency? Apparently the drivers among us who are also Internet savvy.
Fortunately our state lawmakers are working on a bill that will make it a criminal offense for unauthorized people to own, sell or use the signal changers, which are currently available to anyone willing to cough up $400 for one on the Internet. Given the amount some people spend on their cars and the accessories that go with them, it’s likely many would jump at the chance to make every light a green light — for themselves.
Aren’t stereos and CD changers enough these days? If we were meant to change the light signals on our own, what would be the purpose of having those intersection lights in the first place? Have you ever watched the stream of drivers on all sides of an intersection try to work their way through when a signal is down? Now some people think they’re above having to wait at all and they’re willing to put others’ lives at risk to make their travels a little bit faster.
"There are already a lot of traffic accidents. Can you imagine the problems with safety these cause?" Sen. Paull Shin of Edmonds said in a recent Herald article. "Technology is wonderful, unless it’s technology for the wrong purposes."
Or the wrong people.
The purpose of these devices is to make it possible for emergency crews to reach their destination as quickly as possible, considering that every second counts in these situations. Nobody else can claim such importance. If we’re that late for an appointment, we have no one to blame but ourselves. Changing a signal on your own puts all the other drivers around you in danger. Law enforcement officials and firefighters are trained to use these devices and they have sirens and lights on their vehicles to warn the rest of us they’re coming. Perhaps the fact that many, if not most, drivers don’t bother to pull over for these vehicles is proof that signal changers in the hands or cars of the average driver shouldn’t surprise us at all.
Sen. Shin’s bill calls for steeper fines (Mountlake Terrace police hand out tickets for $194 to people caught with the device) and even jail time. Hitting offenders in the pocketbook might be the best way to get the message through to those drivers — a red light means stop, not change the signal.
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