In the city that I live near and have worked in for most of my life there is currently a lot of building going on and I mean a LOT! It's like some sort of financial bomb has gone off and seeded building sites all over the place.
The consequence of this is disruption to the city's roads and pavements.
I commute to work via the train and have had to put up with being corralled, redirected, squeezed and sometimes, even stopped by temporary walls, barricades, barriers, traffic cones, padded scaffolding and all other manner of health-and-safety-gone-made measures these building companies erect to give themselves a heightened sense of 'ooh look at us, aren't we just the awesomeness badass erectors of steel and concrete you've ever seen'.
This morning took the biscuit, it's Saturday but I needed to go into work to do a few things and I went there in my car instead of catching the train because I wanted to get there quicker. As I got near work I went past one of these construction sites and saw that they had put some temporary traffic lights up to control a pedestrian crossing by a roundabout. As I came off the roundabout and approached the crossing I saw that the lights were on red so, naturally, I stopped. There were no people crossing and none that I could see around me, nor were there any construction workers around and the road ahead (a dual carriageway) was totally clear of vehicles, private, construction or otherwise but I still stopped because, well, they ARE traffic lights and they were on red!
A couple of minutes passed, they were still red... another car arrived, the driver opting to take the outside lane next to me, he too stopped. We both sat there for a mother minute or so, still red. More cars appeared behind us both, another minute passed, still red. Another minute (and you have to realise here that 5 minutes at traffic lights in the UK is not the norm!) lights still showed red. Now people were getting impatient, including me but what could I do? The lights were red! I looked over at the occupants in the car next to me and they were clearly as confused as me but both of us needed to do something because we were in front so naturally we had the impetus to do something about it.
I began to think that maybe these lights were on red because of some construction work going on much further up the road that I couldn't see but as I rationalised it I thought that if that was the case they wouldn't have put two lights either side of the crossing. They would have coned off one of the sections of the dual carriageway ahead and not needed a traffic light system. This one was definitely for the pedestrian crossing but why the hell were both lights on red for so long when there clearly weren't any fucking pedestrians around?!
Then horns started to blare from the people behind, which was understandable and that kicked me into action, I again looked over at the people in the car next to me, made eye contact, shrugged my shoulders, quickly took another 360 look around to see that there were no pedestrians around, put the car in gear and jammed my foot on the accelerator... a split second later the driver next to me did the same thing.
That's the first time in my life I have voluntarily ran a red light... and all because those fucking idiot construction workers had clearly bollocksed up the configuration of those lights. I'm not proud that I had to do that but if I'd stayed where I was the traffic would have backed up onto the roundabout behind me and could have potentially caused an accident.
Note to construction workers - if you're going to run the rule over us poor peons with your protect-your-arses health-and-safety toys and procedures, get them fucking right or you'll cause more trouble than you're apparently trying to avoid. You forced me to run a red light which as a law-abiding citizen of the UK I don't feel good about.
Tossers.
