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Comment by tetsusaiga | Hacker News Reader

One thing I noticed— it seemed like people were running red lights with an abandon that I'd never witnessed before.

It was like they just didn't care anymore.

Anecdotally, whenever I'd mention this to someone they would say they noticed the very same thing, although I realize that data point could be meaningless.

Still, let me know if you noticed it where you are too.

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This must be a regional thing.

You pretty much[1] NEVER see anyone just blow a light in the northeast. Ignore a no right on red sign or squeak a few extra cars through as a yellow turns red, sure. But I've never seen anybody ever just barrel through an established red like a truck that's lost its brakes in a Russian dash-cam video. Not during the pandemic, not ever.

[1] By "pretty much" I mean "literally, but I'm covering my ass lest everyone chime in with that anecdote from a police chase in downtown Boston that you saw on the news in 1998".

Live in Salt Lake City now. Blowing red lights is like a sport here it seems.

>squeak a few extra cars through as a yellow turns red, sure.

For one thing, this counts as blowing through a red light. Secondly, I've seen plenty of this in Philly - people blowing blowing through stop lights and stop signs

Here in the Midwest, I see plenty of people stretching yellow into orange, particularly on left-turn arrows. It's very rare for me to see someone just charge through a light that's been red for any significant length of time, but sometimes it comes up in the news headlines.

> It's very rare for me to see someone just charge through a light that's been red for any significant length of time

I'm in southern Mississippi, and that's the socially accepted way to go through an intersection. I'm only partially joking.

I’ve seen it in Brooklyn on multiple occasions, always late night.

I'm in the Northeast (Fairfield County, CT) and see red light blowing on an almost daily basis. Even during rush hour after 2020. I mean people even anticipate it. At least twice a month I'll see a clear intersection and a light that has been green for 2-3 seconds and cars are still waiting because some idiot is just barreling along in broad daylight with no intention of stopping coming the opposite way.

> One thing I noticed— it seemed like people were running red lights with an abandon that I'd never witnessed before.

I don't know that it happens more often here now, because it wasn't enforced to begin with. I saw someone run a red light to make a left turn, in front of a police car who had a green light and had to slam on the brakes to let the guy run the red light in front of him. The police officer simply continued down the road afterwards. That kind of stuff happens all the time here. There's a few police that might give you a speeding ticket but mostly they only care if you have drugs, alcohol, or cash.

I've noticed it too. And it isn't just running it "by a little" where someone could theoretically talk their way out of a ticket by saying they mistimed the light. But I'm talking about really egregious examples where if the guy going the other way had been inattentive they would have gotten tboned.

This is a key part of it that I left out actually, the egregious nature of it. Interesting to hear you say this too.

I think part of it is that we've just gone through about two years of nationwide, massive, consequence-free civil disobedience campaigns, watched people ignore public health mandates with impunity, and read reports of a handful of regions decriminalizing certain petty crimes. People take in this input and, somewhat accurately, determine that nobody is home at the police station and anything goes now.

There are probably multiple causes, malaise due to covid messing with our way of life, as you said unrest and civil disobedience. When the authorities have bigger fish to fry you can get away with a lot of small things. I get the sense of a general discontent with how things are going in general. And that feeds back into this.

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