When I moved to Vancouver, British Columbia, it took a long time to adjust to their flashing green traffic lights. Mind you, not all traffic lights up here flash. Many are normal green lights that turn yellow (“amber”) and then red in a regular cycle.

But these flashing green lights are something else. They mean something else. These are death trap lights. They are designed to maximize driver frustration and to endanger the lives of all who dare to use these intersections.

The basic idea is that if you are driving and see a flashing green light, you can drive through it as you would any other non-flashing green light. Okay, fine. But the traffic from either side has NO light whatsoever. Cross traffic has stop signs. On busy days, cross traffic just sits there waiting for that rare break in traffic, because flashing green lights do not turn red.

Unless a pedestrian pushes a crosswalk button.

That’s right, pedestrians control flashing green lights. At least they can turn them to red for a few moments. Then finally the cross traffic can make it across the intersection. Whew!

Except that pedestrians have the right-of-way and take the longest time crossing the street, effectively choking off all but one or two cars from the cross traffic lanes. So while pedestrians sooner or later come to the rescue and allow cross traffic through, they put themselves in mortal danger by dawdling in the crosswalks.

I’ve seen plenty of passengers – even drivers – of cars that are stuck in these cross traffic line-ups jump out of their cars, run to the corner, push the cross walk button, and then dash back to their car just to stop that damned flashing green light for a few moments.

And get this: on the east coast of Canada, flashing green traffic lights mean something else again. Those intersections have three stop signs and the flashing green is in one direction only. The result is that drivers who have the flashing green light know that it’s safe to make a left turn. When in Vancouver, these drivers are constantly cutting into oncoming traffic!

Maybe it’s a Canadian form of population control.

As the commercial gift-giving obligation of the Christmas season approaches, I may go out and make some extra cash by manning a particularly busy flashing green light intersection and pushing the cross walk button for every dollar tossed my way.

Jim Lawter

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