Now I won't ever dare to drive close to midnight ;-(
But what do you do/When the light turns blue/With orange and lavender spots?
Oh great. Dream of stoplights produces Shel Silverstein. I certainly had no idea I remembered that particular verse.
A little like Amtrack trains (if running on time) stopping for an hour during the autumn DST switch.
I remember being pretty damn nervous around cops when I first learned to drive. I was convinced I was doing something wrong -- or, like, I'd look at them wrong -- at all times.
I'm still pretty damn nervous around cops, in or out of a car. They have guns!
This also reminds me that in looking up the "Pittsburgh Left" discussed here a few weeks back, one of the theories of why it developed in Pittsburgh was because traffic signals used to go Green->Green/Yellow->Yellow->Red in Pittsburgh, so there was a lesser chance of late cross traffic. See last item here--they say it was that way until the mid '80s but I don't recall from my earlier periods of living here.
4,5: Yes. Growing up the concept that a policeman was there to help you rather than in some way fuck you up was pretty alien to me. And it was reinforced in a number of ways from my teens through early 20s.
7: Me too. Whenever I get stuck standing near a cop on the subway, my eyes are helplessly drawn to his gun. It just seems absurd that he's standing right there, right next to me, with a deadly weapon. I hate it. The worst is when the Herald Square station gets staffed with military people with machine guns. Really? Machine guns?
It just seems absurd that he's standing right there, right next to me, with a deadly weapon.
See, the joys of living in a state with concealed carry means that anyone could be packing!
3: That raises so many questions. Why don't they just rejigger the timetables for that day so that "on time" becomes an hour earlier? And what do they do when Daylight Savings Time begins in the spring? (I suppose nobody will even notice if Amtrak trains are an extra hour late.)
(Mildly extra-pseudy): For some reason the OP story reminds me of a time when a former roommate and I were driving to a concert in DC. About halfway up, we "did a J" (in the parlance of our times), not a minute after which we got a flat tire.
I'm wrestling with the lame-ass, rusty, factory jack and spare when a cop pulls up behind us. Checks license and registration and, seeing the difficulty I'm having, offers his super-deluxe primo cop jack.
I proceed to change the tire like a pro, high as a motherfucking kite, and we're on our way, no problem.
I'm pretty sure the anxiety took at least a couple years off my life, and this story is a great example of why I steer clear of the ganja these days.
10.last: Right, they just run late in the spring (and I half wonder if I am being ULed here). However, I was looking for but could not find a much more detailed and comprehensive article that I had read once on how the overall rail system handled it--as I recall there was some similar accommodation made system-wide, mostly for reasons of safety in switching and signaling.
ULed
Under Loved?
Umbrage Leaked?
Umbilically linked?
Urban Legended.
You know who would know what the freights do at the DST switch?
Hobos! ... and Knecht.
7,8: Just going to church made me nervous from about age 10 up because there was always a cop working the crosswalk in front. In part because every once in a while I or my friends would have had some very minor league dust-up with the police that my parents knew nothing about, and I would convince myself that the guy was going to recognize me and say something.
While turning left I accidentally cut off what turned out to be an unmarked cop car, and since I had just learned to drive stick, after coming to an abrupt stop and stalling out I then accidentally revved my engine at him. At which point he pointed ... pointedly at the light on his dash ("oh! He's a...cop" I thought), and then motioned for me to back the fuck up. Which I did.
That was like last week.
Awesome DonaQ. Now what the heck is this "lights start flashing at midnight" thing?
17: A lot of towns, especially smaller ones with very little traffic have stoplights that switch, at a pre-appointed time (e.g., midnight), to flash either red (these you treat like a stop sign) or yellow (these you treat as a caution warning—you have the right of way, but you might be wise to slow it down a bit and be aware that the cross-traffic may be getting ready to enter the roadway).
16: heh! You should have peeled out at him.
In Soviet Russia yellow after red means gun you.