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I'm sure we've all done the little lurch-forward thing when we're sitting at a red, and one of the lights turns green but it isn't ours.
I saw that yesterday. We were sitting at a red, waiting to turn left. The right-turn suddenly got an arrow, and this guy actually got almost ten feet before braking and realizing that his light was still red. So he popped it in reverse and backed up so the cross traffic could turn left without hitting him.
And...he didn't take it out of reverse.
I was in the lane next to him, and I just sat there, staring at his reverse lights, fixated. They weren't going off. He wasn't taking it out of reverse. Soon, our light would be green, and he was still in reverse! I was slightly horrified, but also strangely excited to see what would unfold.
Fortunately for the car behind him, he eventually tried to do the whole "creep forward" thing, which of course ended up being a "creep backward", which he then noticed and corrected. So when the light did turn green and he took off, it was in the proper direction.
But for about a minute, I'm pretty sure he forgot what gear he was in, and that could have turned out so much worse if he just took off at the green light in the wrong gear...
I saw that yesterday. We were sitting at a red, waiting to turn left. The right-turn suddenly got an arrow, and this guy actually got almost ten feet before braking and realizing that his light was still red. So he popped it in reverse and backed up so the cross traffic could turn left without hitting him.
And...he didn't take it out of reverse.
I was in the lane next to him, and I just sat there, staring at his reverse lights, fixated. They weren't going off. He wasn't taking it out of reverse. Soon, our light would be green, and he was still in reverse! I was slightly horrified, but also strangely excited to see what would unfold.
Fortunately for the car behind him, he eventually tried to do the whole "creep forward" thing, which of course ended up being a "creep backward", which he then noticed and corrected. So when the light did turn green and he took off, it was in the proper direction.
But for about a minute, I'm pretty sure he forgot what gear he was in, and that could have turned out so much worse if he just took off at the green light in the wrong gear...