Pink lights?

When my Dad drove though a crossing for which the light had already turned yellow, he used to always say: "That was a pink one!", i. e. not quite dark red.

I spent a lot of time driving in town this week for various reasons and I had a lot of chances to observe people driving through on "pink" lights:

• Numerous drivers who, upon seeing yellow, floored it instead of stopping;
• A van driver who just kept tooling along, but of course, he was yakking in his mobile phone (forbidden in Germany, btw) making it kind of difficult to react to everything;
• A two-trailer truck coming from the left at a Y-junction, barreling down with at least 50-60 kmh just as I was accelerating (scared the living daylights out of me);
• A taxi driver (with a passenger!) who was turning left and did not enter the crossing until after the light turned red - he could have lost his taxt license (rightly so!) if a cop had seen this stunt.

This is not to mention the honks I got for doing 30 in a new 30 zone (a bridge which is in danger of falling down!) or not passing a truck fast enough. That last lady was on my tailgate, flashing her lights, although we were in town and I was doing 50 trying to get past this horrible last truck. Okay, I was then being childish myself, I knew there was a 2-lanes-going-to-1 coming up, so I got over and managed to overtake her on the right, she had to let me in just in front of her.

Don't get me started on the bicyclists or the kids running across the street against a red light to catch a bus or the folks double- or triple-parking. I am truely amazed that there are not more accidents in town with all this "the law is only valid for everyone else, not for me, I'm in a hurry."

For sure, I now follow the old pedestrian sage "Look both ways before crossing the street" when driving my car, even if I have a green light.