People are just silly...
 

I'm looking out my office window. The view is of an intersection where the traffic lights are being repaired...so, they are blinking red. For those that don't know...an intersection with blinking red lights is to be treated like a 4-way stop sign.

You can imagine the chaos this creates...because I guarantee you that more than half the population has no clue about the blinking red light rules.

So, I'm staring out the window giggling at the silliness going on out there. Either everybody just sits there and stares at each other and nobody goes or everybody tries to go at once.

Wow...this should be a spectator sport.

You do an awful lot of gigglin', boy. What's wrong with you?

Problem is when one road is flashing red, and the other road is flashing yellow. I'm always afraid that when I'm on the flashing yellow road, people on the flashing red road will assume that my road is also flashing red, and that I'm supposed to stop.

Never seen that. It sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen.

It's done all the time after a certain time on less busy roads...say 11pm, lights on the more busy road would blink yellow and the other one would blink red...just saves time waiting at a light in the middle of the night at the less busy intersections.

they do it in my town at 10pm, at a very busy intersection - 5 lanes running in one direction, 2 running the other. It's murder to get through it on many nights - some of the lanes have yellows, some have reds. I'm waiting for a major accident to happen there.

Actually *look* at the chaos of society. Do you ever ask yourself how it all actually works? On a fundamental level, it really is all quite absurd. I wonder if some greater power perceives the earth as a giant ant hill....

It's worse when the traffic signal lights go out completely. Last time I came through one (around midnight), I did the proper thing (treated it like a 4-way STOP), sat there, and watched three or four cars on the cross street all go right through it. Even the presence of a cop car (albeit an empty one) in the median didn't get them to stop. I could see if one person who wasn't familiar with the area didn't know there was supposed to be a signal there, but most people out after midnight on a weekday likely knew it was there.

As for the flashing lights, we (transportation engineers) do it all the time. It's not supposed to be that difficult for drivers. It's usually only done at night, so it's easy to see if the cross street has a flashing yellow or red. You should not be on the road if you don't know what a flashing red or yellow light means. It's not our fault the world is full of idiots. :)