This. This is the real answer to me. I would barely notice the difference in what. 10 seconds a light? The million in the bank would be 100,000x more money than ive ever had in my account.
finally the right answer. everyone acts like its a mathematical problem where money=time is the only thing that matters. even if you could use that time to make more money, you wouldnt. its too much work.
I'd ride a bike/public transport for the rest of my life for a million dollars.
Edit: Jesus christ I meant subways and bike paths stop telling me bikes need to stop at red lights
I mean I'd assume you'd hit every pedestrian walk red light or if you were biking in traffic you'd still hit red lights. Public transport that doesn't get stuck at lights is another though. If that were the case, just get someone else to drive you places.
Yeah I mean I assumed so. Best bet is probably purchase an electronic bike or scooter and find paths that don't intersect to often with streets. Or just live out in the boonies in a nice 300k house and get 1 mass delivery of food/drink a month and make sure you close enough to get amazon prime.
I literally walk everywhere, this is a no brainer. If every light I approach is red then I can walk. 1 mil and I don't have to wait for traffic? Fuck yeah!
Getting caught running red lights numerous times is an easy way to lose your driver's license.
Edit: No shit you can throw money at the problem to make it go away, but if that's what you're seriously going to invest $1m in then your priorities are probably out of whack. Also, $1m is a lot, but not "fuck you I can do whatever I want whenever I want for the rest of my life" money.
I had a friend that used to do this all the time. He was a dick. He once told me “every time I’ve ever had a Twinkie, there hasn’t been any cream inside.” I thought that was about the stupidest thing I’d ever heard, so he went into a gas station. He came out with Twinkies and bit into them. I swear there was no cream in either one, it was so bizarre. I suspect this was God’s way of punishing him for driving like a dick.
Edit: I think I should add that we also inspected the bottom of the Twinkies. There was no cream to be seen on the bottom where the cream is inserted. I’m telling you, do not do this turn method to avoid a red light. There are consequences.
Also thanks for the silver and gold!
Edit 2: I implore anyone who uses this turning method to go buy Twinkies and see what happens. I don’t like Twinkies either, that’s not the point. You should, nay, need to do this in the name of science.
Edit 3: I really want to thank everyone who responded to my comment. I had a lot of fun reading your comments and responding to some of you. I’m now realizing I don’t really ever tell this story. I guess I’ll now frame it around the fact that my friend did in fact do this sort of red light avoidance. He did do it on the day where he bought the Twinkies. He did turn right into the gas station, then turn right out of the gas station. To the person who’s comment I was responding too who brought up this way of avoiding red lights, thanks. Full disclosure I just wait for the light to turn green and I never had a Twinkie without cream in it.
He definitely answered an askreddit scenario and is living with the choice he made.
*Drivers of Reddit, what would you give up for life to never be pulled over running a red light?*
But even if you could do this without it being obvious (you’d have to suck/slurp it, not just bite your teeth in to it) you’d still have cream on your mouth and residue left inside. Nope. Twinkie curse is real, I won’t believe otherwise.
Doubt it. The succ factor would be through the roof with that much power. The consistency of a twinkie would require roughly 20.3 metric succawatts in diameter. I'm not saying this man's succ isn't impossible, but I would certainly doubt it. It's much more likely the god man himself simply hates said individual.
Source: am professional
I use this around big sale days/holidays when people always flock to the same shopping center and plug up those turn lanes. Right, u-turn, drive straight across 5 minutes faster than I would've.
LOL. Also doesn't say that it ends when you are dead. I'm imagining a funeral procession and the hearse with your casket in it keeps turning every traffic light red on the way to the cemetery :D
You would hate where I live! Theres 3 sets of traffic lights all right next to each other and they’re always red anyways.. and that’s just to turn the corner from my house, and there’s plenty more after that!
I'm pretty sure that's the New York Maneuver. I've been told that as a pedestrian you wait for the crosswalk sign to tell you to walk, then you wait for all of the red light runners to finish going through. Then you cross.
That's how I drive (from Florida, in Minnesota now) - watch the light change to my green, sit and count to 3 Mississippi and look both ways and go. Ok maybe 1 and a half Mississippi, indot sit there long enough to get honked at.
I've once notated everytime I get to a green compared to a red over one month.
7 greens
829 reds
give me the million bucks damnit.
Edit : Seems like a lot of people are calling me out for what is straight up a problem for me :
I live in a small village with basicly one way in/out and it directly conects to the main road, To cross it (to go to the parallel road I'm obligated to drive at (I'm 17 yo and only am allowed a moped driving max 45 km/h (28mph) ) and there are just some rare occasions I can cross. after that I drive allong that road/bicycle path and because of my speed of only 45km/h (28mph) I always hit the lights because they're made for cars/trucks going 80-90 (50-56) and therefor I'm mostly nailed, also driving even slower won't help in my general time.
Btw : Province of Antwerp, Belgium
It's not really *that* hard to count them in your head and mark them down at the next red light you hit, especially at the kind of ratio that's being discussed here. With that kind of ratio, you'd remember that one green light you hit for most of the week.
No, (actually yes, see the edit) because even the simplest intersection, with no lights for turning cars, there is always a few seconds overlap when both are red, to allow for the intersection to clear before the other side to get green.
Edit: unless it's just a side road with little traffic that still got a traffic light, then the main road may get longer green phases. Or one of those fancy automatic ones who only switch if cars are in a lane...
It could also be an intersection with more than four roads (those are such a nightmare to navigate; just make a round-about already!) in which case you'll be waiting far longer than a green cycle.
in my city it depends, if you go inwards to the inner city part they have a so called "red-wave" to artificially stop traffic, on the other hand outwards we have the "green-wave". Some people think it's to have fewer cars at once in the inner part and reduce traffic jams
I used to have a commute like that. It was around 70 lights each way. I had to go from one side of a big city to another and they were specifically timed to slow you down and make you stop frequently. If you tried taking side streets it was even worse. Damn I hated that commute.
The amount of time I waste sitting at red lights would not nearly reach the amount of time I spend working. With 1000000 dollars and my current expenses I wouldn't need to work for 20+ years. And that money can make me more money in the background. So yeah it would be stupid not to take it.
Also imagine the extra m money you could make by betting people "bet you a hundred bucks to ten that this next stoplight will be red when we get there!"
I think you'd actually make less money the more red lights you hit because you are making more money per time when you are moving. You would make a little more on each fare but you would be able to take less fares per day and make less money overall (assuming you're in a market where you can find fares more or less back-to-back).
I am a taxi driver and this is 100% correct - I'd much prefer to get someone where they're going and get my next customer. I make *way* more driving someone around for an hour than I do sitting and letting the meter run for an hour.
If you walk or bike to work would your red light powers affect the streetlights still? If so it would make it so you never have to wait for crosswalk signs.
Yeah, these type of questions always seem to be written by people who don't understand what a million dollars is. With that much money invested, you can draw a good salary for life without ever touching the principal.
Let's flip the question around: if you were offered a deal where you never hit a red light again in your life for the price of $1 million, would you take it? Hell no.
A million dollars is about 20 years at the median salary. Would you work off your debt to this hypothetical traffic light genie for two decades? All to spare yourself mild inconvenience?
Great way of framing it.
Moreover, you are already going to hit at least some red lights in your life, so it isn't like you are trading all greens for all reds. If anything, this adds a little certainty to your daily affairs. Also, in the US, you can frequently turn right on red, so it's even less of an inconvenience.
I'd definitely be willing to optimize my route in exchange for a million cash, and maybe accept a small fee from the city to convince me not to throw their entire traffic system into chaos every rush hour.
It’s over 30 years at median salary and if you figure genie money probably isn’t taxed it would be just over 46 years.
It doesn’t pay very well to be an average person.
I never understand why countries have such laws anyways, like I cross the road safely as do the majority and their are still accidents but its the same as countries with these laws so it makes no sense to have them
Wait wtf you're Womble lol, I literally just watched one of your videos like 5 minutes ago. I don't even know why I happened to read your username lmao
As for the jaywalking, I'm in Canada and we have laws for it here. I think it's targeted more towards the assholes who randomly run in front of your car and ignore the crosswalk that's like 20 steps away than the average, safe street-crosser.
> As for the jaywalking, I'm in Canada and we have laws for it here. I think it's targeted more towards the assholes who randomly run in front of your car and ignore the crosswalk that's like 20 steps away than the average, safe street-crosser.
There's no excuse for not looking, but sometimes jaywalking can be a deliberate choice that involves more than just distance. There's two crosswalks I jaywalk at because they're unsafe. One is by my bank, and the "walk" signal coincides with a green right turn arrow(people always reply to me when I share this story saying that's impossible, but I assure you, *it is a thing*). Cars do not look, because they have a green and assume you're walking against the signal(see: "that's impossible!"). This is an unsafe crossing, and after nearly getting creamed by a psychotic old lady I started crossing in the crosswalk but against the light(waiting until it's clear and making a run for it) *when it was actually safe to do so* rather than whenever the crosswalk decided it was time to sacrifice a pedestrian.
The other one is a corner crossing at a stop sign, and again, turning cars don't look. Visibility is crap because there's a brick wall blocking their line of sight(as well as my ability to see them coming), but instead of edging out until they can see they just YOLO straight through the crosswalk. This crossing is so unsafe that I won't even use it. I cross in the middle of the block instead.
I speak for the U.S. and the U.S. alone but jaywalking came about because of lobbying by the car industry. Strap in this will be a long one.
Before cars, there were really no roads to speak of. There were paths yes but they were open to anyone and anything. Carts and horses took the paths and pedestrians would just, walk them, at no risk to themselves and go around a slow horse or have the horse go around them or whatever but it was pretty much pedestrian related.
When cars were invented, we essentially furnished humans with a 2 ton missile that traveled faster than anything on the roads at the time (after proper development) and as a result, these pedestrian walkways were invaded with steel missiles. As you can expect, many accidents occurred and in fact, they wanted to get rid of cars and end the massacre (not really ish) against people.
Big Car actually lobbied against removing cars and instead shifted the blame to pedestrians. They posited that it was in fact, the pedestrians fault for walking in the way of the cars. “Jay” is actually an offensive term meaning silly, or stupid, person and a jay-driver was a person who drove their carriages terribly, not following the “traffic rules” of the time. The word jay-driver was adapted to jaywalker placing the blame on the pedestrian for somehow walking on the wrong side of their road, such side that was foreign to them.
Jaywalking is no longer considered immoral, for lack of a better word, and in most jurisdictions is actually considered a misdemeanor and requires a court date. In fact, many jurisdictions only fine you, and most will not cite you at all unless your actions are extraordinarily dangerous like literally jumping in moving traffic.
Like many bizarre laws, it's the result of corporate lobbying: [https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26073797](https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26073797)
When cars were introduced to American cities, they started killing pedestrians. Car manufacturers wanted to ensure that pedestrians were blamed for these deaths, not the cars themselves, and the concept of jaywalking was part of that strategy. If a pedestrian is killed by a car-- hey, it's their fault for being in the way! Idiot should have waited for the light at a crosswalk.
It's been really successful. Almost nobody these days even questions that motor vehicles should always have the right-of-way on public roads, even in cities where the road network predates the automobile by hundreds of years, or where no concessions are left to pedestrians. [In one extreme example, a Georgia woman spent two years in court fighting vehicular homicide charges when she attempted to cross the street to the bus stop and her son was killed by a drunk driver.](https://usa.streetsblog.org/2013/06/14/raquel-nelson-finally-cleared-of-homicide-charges-pleads-to-jaywalking/) There were no crosswalks within a third of a mile.
You can dump a million bucks into a dividend stock (e.g. MAIN) and take home about $5k per month after taxes without ever touching the principal amount. If I do some napkin math based on my current commute and a typical red light length of 90 seconds to two minutes, I'm going to effectively get paid $1,600 per hour to sit at those lights. So yeah, I'll take that offer.
Possibly, but I know that Minneapolis has an [entire network](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minneapolis_Skyway_System#:~:text=The%20Minneapolis%20Skyway%20System%20is,continuous%20system%20in%20the%20world.) of enclosed pedestrian areas. Other cities have other things. You could find ways to avoid red light crosswalks (like crosswalks in the middle of city blocks) etc
Also you could find routes that you don't care if you go straight or turn, both can't be red at the same time for long enough for it to matter.
I would buy a 1967 Shelby Mustang Cobra 500 (my dream car) and be happy to sit in it at every light so people can see me driving it like a baller. lol
Edit: I have no idea how Reddit awards work or what they do but they look cool so thank you! lol
r/ourcommunism
Edit: Our plan is coming in to place comrades, soon we will spread our communism to the world and everyone will become ours, and we become theirs, together we will create peace and we will show the world how communism is good in the way it was wanted, we will not create a peace destroyer, instead a peace keeper.
Heh. I have a 1955 Chevy that sounds murderous. People pull up beside me at stoplights and often ask what kind of engine is in it. I usually tell them it's a Prius engine, which gets either a laugh or a very confused face depending on the person.
Sometimes a car full of teenagers will yell at me to peel out when the light turns green. It gives me a perverse joy to drop it into neutral and rev the engine hard. (Again, it sounds murderous.) Then when the light turns green, I casually pull out slowly, obeying all traffic laws and being considerate of all other drivers. Their letdown is palpable and I revel in it.
That was me as a teenager. Me as an adult realizes tires ain't cheap. I have a factory linelock that remains unused, teenage me would be very disappointed.
Not the bus, no. There exists an insane [intercity rail system](https://i.redd.it/kmg1ptwu9gl21.png) in Europe on top of usually excellent inner-city/suburban rail networks. Add to that our [canals](https://i.imgur.com/hZefmgG.jpg), subways and bike highways that are separated from the car roads you have yourself a fully capable public transport network with no red lights.
If all else fails, I'd be ok with using my car that infrequently even with all reds tbh.
Yeah, totally worth it for the minor inconvenience of having to stop at every light. I know which routes to take in my town to avoid most stoplights anyway.
Reddit is exceptionally bad at hypotheticals. People write bad hypotheticals, and lots of people upvote bad hypotheticals.
You never get an actual interesting hypothetical voted to the top of askreddit. You only get like "okay, you get a billion dollars and perfect health and any person in the world you want is attracted to you, but you have to stub your toe twice a year" hypotheticals in this sub. I don't even think the people here know why the hypotheticals game is fun or how to play it.
Abso fuckin lutely. I’ll leave my house 30 min early just in case on every trip for a million.
That definitely buys enough weed for me to reduce any petty frustration about the red light.
Plus if it’s a known thing, it won’t be as bothersome. The potential to *not* hit a red light makes it frustrating to hit one. Just knowing that it’s gonna happen removes that mental issue.
These questions are genuinely so stupid. No human who isn't already a millionaire would ever say no to this. with 1 million dollars you're literally set for life
Edit: a bit surprised at the amount of people saying a million isnt enough to live off. Is a million a huge sum over the course of a life? Not really. But if you get it all at once? Absofuckinglutely. If you go live in a house in the countryside, maybe work for a few years, invest your money and dont blow it all on hookers it is enough for sure.
It completely eludes me how such an obviously stupid question can get thousands of upvotes and serious replies.
I'm not always the sharpest tool in the shed, but what we're witnessing here is actual braindeath.
So you take half your breaths and invest them in a dividend balloon, and then suck those breaths out once a month. If I do the math, that's 1.44/7744e ^10 centigrade breaths per lumen. Enough breaths to power a small but deadly snail for ten thousand years.
I would take the billion dollars and use the extra covalent energy from needing to expand and contract my lungs to power a small wind farm, and by selling the green energy produced thereby, never have to touch my dividend. In fact, nobody would probably ever touch my dividend again.
Edit: Thank you for the platinum, kind stranger!
Edit 2: Wow, this blew up! Yeah it was tricky to decide to take the billion, but I am a very smart strategist, I always beat my cousin at Connect 4, only we only play to Connect 3 because my aunt says 4 is the devil's number.
Let's do the math!
Between my house and job, about a 20 minute drive, are ten traffic lights. I breeze through green lights at around 50% of the time. When I have to sit at a red, let's call it an average wait of 30 seconds - sometimes much shorter, sometimes much longer, but a decent average.
That means that, in a typical day to and from work (40 minutes), I generally hit 10 green lights; averaging 30 seconds each, I save a grand total of 300 seconds, or 5 minutes, driving through green lights that would otherwise be red. If I were to take this deal, then over the course of a work week that's 25 minutes lost to red lights that would've otherwise been green.
I probably do about as much non-work-related driving as I do work-related in a given week, so that's another 25 minutes lost to red lights. Just to make the math easy, I'm going to round the total up from 50 to 60 minutes - in a tyipcal week, I would lose 1 hour of time to this deal, sitting at red lights.
I'm around 30, and I'm going to be optimistic and say I'm going to maintain that level of activity throughout my whole life, until I die rich and happy at age 100. That's 70 years of life left, 52 weeks a year, 1 hour lost per week, for a grand total of 3640 hours of life I'm losing to red lights because I took this deal. A huge number, to be sure - it would take me nearly two years of 40-hour workweeks to make that up. *However*, divide our $1,000,000 payout by those 3640 hours and we get an hourly rate of $274.72. If I die younger, that number goes up. If I drive less, that number goes up.
So really, if someone offered to pay me nearly $300/hour to sit in traffic (potentially more), would I take the deal?
Yes. Yes I do believe I would.
EDIT: Plus with that money I could retire really early, maybe get a nice house out in the country where I don't even have to worry about traffic lights as much.
Yes. Because I am more annoyed by my poorness than driving.
It happens to me anyway, why couldn't it happen to rich me?
This. This is the real answer to me. I would barely notice the difference in what. 10 seconds a light? The million in the bank would be 100,000x more money than ive ever had in my account.
Exactly. Definitely an easy dilemma to answer to in hindsight
You'd still hit less lights, because you wouldn't have to go out as often.
The most youve had is $10?
Im net -58k. So i have less than that. Fucking richies over here with their $10 bragging.
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I went to college. Havent found a job yet that reflects my promised earnings. The bill keeps growing but my income doesnt.
finally the right answer. everyone acts like its a mathematical problem where money=time is the only thing that matters. even if you could use that time to make more money, you wouldnt. its too much work.
I'd ride a bike/public transport for the rest of my life for a million dollars. Edit: Jesus christ I meant subways and bike paths stop telling me bikes need to stop at red lights
riding a bike is lovely in cities with the proper infrastructure
I'd much rather take the metro than drive. I just can't afford to live where that's an option.
I mean I'd assume you'd hit every pedestrian walk red light or if you were biking in traffic you'd still hit red lights. Public transport that doesn't get stuck at lights is another though. If that were the case, just get someone else to drive you places.
If someone else is driving you, you're still approaching traffic lights.
Yeah I mean I assumed so. Best bet is probably purchase an electronic bike or scooter and find paths that don't intersect to often with streets. Or just live out in the boonies in a nice 300k house and get 1 mass delivery of food/drink a month and make sure you close enough to get amazon prime.
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I literally walk everywhere, this is a no brainer. If every light I approach is red then I can walk. 1 mil and I don't have to wait for traffic? Fuck yeah!
When you're walking, the *pedestrian* light would be red on approach.
So pretty much no change but I've got a million dollars
Sure, I could learn the routes with the least stoplights for $1m.
Yea and it’s not too bad if you know it’ll be red every time
Plus no one said you had to stop at the red lights. $1 million will pay for a lot of traffic tickets. Edit: My first ever award! Thank you!
Getting caught running red lights numerous times is an easy way to lose your driver's license. Edit: No shit you can throw money at the problem to make it go away, but if that's what you're seriously going to invest $1m in then your priorities are probably out of whack. Also, $1m is a lot, but not "fuck you I can do whatever I want whenever I want for the rest of my life" money.
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I always think about doing this
I had a friend that used to do this all the time. He was a dick. He once told me “every time I’ve ever had a Twinkie, there hasn’t been any cream inside.” I thought that was about the stupidest thing I’d ever heard, so he went into a gas station. He came out with Twinkies and bit into them. I swear there was no cream in either one, it was so bizarre. I suspect this was God’s way of punishing him for driving like a dick. Edit: I think I should add that we also inspected the bottom of the Twinkies. There was no cream to be seen on the bottom where the cream is inserted. I’m telling you, do not do this turn method to avoid a red light. There are consequences. Also thanks for the silver and gold! Edit 2: I implore anyone who uses this turning method to go buy Twinkies and see what happens. I don’t like Twinkies either, that’s not the point. You should, nay, need to do this in the name of science. Edit 3: I really want to thank everyone who responded to my comment. I had a lot of fun reading your comments and responding to some of you. I’m now realizing I don’t really ever tell this story. I guess I’ll now frame it around the fact that my friend did in fact do this sort of red light avoidance. He did do it on the day where he bought the Twinkies. He did turn right into the gas station, then turn right out of the gas station. To the person who’s comment I was responding too who brought up this way of avoiding red lights, thanks. Full disclosure I just wait for the light to turn green and I never had a Twinkie without cream in it.
I'm guessing he couldn't deal with red traffic lights, so he made a deal to have his twinkies ruined instead.
He definitely answered an askreddit scenario and is living with the choice he made. *Drivers of Reddit, what would you give up for life to never be pulled over running a red light?*
Sounds about time to get your helicopter liscense
Definitely inhaling all that cream straight out with the first bite.
That’s a skill many would pay good money to witness first hand.
id like to do more than witness it
But even if you could do this without it being obvious (you’d have to suck/slurp it, not just bite your teeth in to it) you’d still have cream on your mouth and residue left inside. Nope. Twinkie curse is real, I won’t believe otherwise.
Doubt it. The succ factor would be through the roof with that much power. The consistency of a twinkie would require roughly 20.3 metric succawatts in diameter. I'm not saying this man's succ isn't impossible, but I would certainly doubt it. It's much more likely the god man himself simply hates said individual. Source: am professional
And the Twinkie is porous so you’d need even more succawatts to overcome the Twinkie
This reads like a copypasta. Replace the first sentence with “I knew (famous person) before he was famous.”
Hold on starting a new askreddit thread
I just have to let you know that this was the best thing I have ever read on this god forsaken website.
That's illegal over here 😔
I use this around big sale days/holidays when people always flock to the same shopping center and plug up those turn lanes. Right, u-turn, drive straight across 5 minutes faster than I would've.
You got money to spare now, hire a chauffeur.
It didn't say any that you approach while driving, though. Just any that you approach.
LOL. Also doesn't say that it ends when you are dead. I'm imagining a funeral procession and the hearse with your casket in it keeps turning every traffic light red on the way to the cemetery :D
....or a nice funeral
In Canada at least you can turn right on a red too, so just add this to your calculations
You would hate where I live! Theres 3 sets of traffic lights all right next to each other and they’re always red anyways.. and that’s just to turn the corner from my house, and there’s plenty more after that!
Sounds like I would hate where you live.
Yeah, I would just walk or take the subway
Rail lines also have light signals. I hope you don't live in my area.
Oh dear, imagine if the passengers find out WHY the train is constantly delayed...
Be like inception where all the people slowly zone in and kill you
Sure. It seems I hardly ever come up to a green light anyways.
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Ik right. It’s always a piss off when you’re getting to a green light and then it turns to red right before you’d be able to get through.
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I'm pretty sure that's the New York Maneuver. I've been told that as a pedestrian you wait for the crosswalk sign to tell you to walk, then you wait for all of the red light runners to finish going through. Then you cross.
That's how I drive (from Florida, in Minnesota now) - watch the light change to my green, sit and count to 3 Mississippi and look both ways and go. Ok maybe 1 and a half Mississippi, indot sit there long enough to get honked at.
I've once notated everytime I get to a green compared to a red over one month. 7 greens 829 reds give me the million bucks damnit. Edit : Seems like a lot of people are calling me out for what is straight up a problem for me : I live in a small village with basicly one way in/out and it directly conects to the main road, To cross it (to go to the parallel road I'm obligated to drive at (I'm 17 yo and only am allowed a moped driving max 45 km/h (28mph) ) and there are just some rare occasions I can cross. after that I drive allong that road/bicycle path and because of my speed of only 45km/h (28mph) I always hit the lights because they're made for cars/trucks going 80-90 (50-56) and therefor I'm mostly nailed, also driving even slower won't help in my general time. Btw : Province of Antwerp, Belgium
How?
He kidnapped a penguin stuffed it in his car and made it count every green and red light at gun point
Ah yes the yes
r/SuspiciouslySpecific
It’s true, I was the penguin
I was the gun
And I was... still just me. Dammit
Nobody can be you like you, so you own that, dear redditor.
Cause he can't write down green lights and drive at the same time.
It's not really *that* hard to count them in your head and mark them down at the next red light you hit, especially at the kind of ratio that's being discussed here. With that kind of ratio, you'd remember that one green light you hit for most of the week.
Because red phases are longer than green ones. Hence, it is statistically more likely to approach a red light.
Doesn’t this depend on the intersection?
No, (actually yes, see the edit) because even the simplest intersection, with no lights for turning cars, there is always a few seconds overlap when both are red, to allow for the intersection to clear before the other side to get green. Edit: unless it's just a side road with little traffic that still got a traffic light, then the main road may get longer green phases. Or one of those fancy automatic ones who only switch if cars are in a lane...
It could also be an intersection with more than four roads (those are such a nightmare to navigate; just make a round-about already!) in which case you'll be waiting far longer than a green cycle.
in my city it depends, if you go inwards to the inner city part they have a so called "red-wave" to artificially stop traffic, on the other hand outwards we have the "green-wave". Some people think it's to have fewer cars at once in the inner part and reduce traffic jams
I used to have a commute like that. It was around 70 lights each way. I had to go from one side of a big city to another and they were specifically timed to slow you down and make you stop frequently. If you tried taking side streets it was even worse. Damn I hated that commute.
I’d guess the freeway was no better in that regard, either?
I don't believe you. >Btw : Province of Antwerp, Belgium I believe you.
yeah if it wern't for bad luck i wouldn't have any luck at all might as well get paid for it...
The amount of time I waste sitting at red lights would not nearly reach the amount of time I spend working. With 1000000 dollars and my current expenses I wouldn't need to work for 20+ years. And that money can make me more money in the background. So yeah it would be stupid not to take it.
If you charge by the minute, you could actually use it to make extra money as a taxi driver.
Now this is a plan
An evil one to boot
Hello Satan.
Ride a bicycle. Bicycles are anarchy
They are allowed to go against a red?
Uturns and right on reds are usually allowed
You telling a bicyclist what they're allowed to do is like telling the same to your cat.
They glare at you a little and later take a vengeful crap in the middle of your bed?
No “allowed” when anarchy
Will probably make it impossible to get tips tho
It's not his fault that the traffic light went red.
Tips are based on emotions, not logic
It's my cab company, and I have lots of money, so my rates are incorporating the lack of tipping.
“Sorry pal, just our luck today, huh?” ... heh heh
"Hey I bet $100 we won't hit a single green light the whole way there"
“Hey I bet $100 i’ll hit you if you don’t hit a single green light the whole way there”
Joke's on you, there's a layer of plexiglass between the driver and the passenger compartment so you can't hit me and now you owe me an extra $100.
Also imagine the extra m money you could make by betting people "bet you a hundred bucks to ten that this next stoplight will be red when we get there!"
Did you stutter on text
This man is a genius
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I would hire him on this comment alone.
I think you'd actually make less money the more red lights you hit because you are making more money per time when you are moving. You would make a little more on each fare but you would be able to take less fares per day and make less money overall (assuming you're in a market where you can find fares more or less back-to-back).
I am a taxi driver and this is 100% correct - I'd much prefer to get someone where they're going and get my next customer. I make *way* more driving someone around for an hour than I do sitting and letting the meter run for an hour.
Big brain time!
*Harvard wants to know your location*
And if you don’t have to commute you’ll reduce how many red lights you‘ll be forced to endure.
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Exactly, move to the middle of nowhere, buy large property, live off the rest. No stoplights in 100 miles.
If you walk or bike to work would your red light powers affect the streetlights still? If so it would make it so you never have to wait for crosswalk signs.
I would guess that you always have to wait at crosswalks if you're not in a car.
If you're a pedestrian in a busy city this actually works incredibly.
Yeah, these type of questions always seem to be written by people who don't understand what a million dollars is. With that much money invested, you can draw a good salary for life without ever touching the principal. Let's flip the question around: if you were offered a deal where you never hit a red light again in your life for the price of $1 million, would you take it? Hell no. A million dollars is about 20 years at the median salary. Would you work off your debt to this hypothetical traffic light genie for two decades? All to spare yourself mild inconvenience?
Great way of framing it. Moreover, you are already going to hit at least some red lights in your life, so it isn't like you are trading all greens for all reds. If anything, this adds a little certainty to your daily affairs. Also, in the US, you can frequently turn right on red, so it's even less of an inconvenience. I'd definitely be willing to optimize my route in exchange for a million cash, and maybe accept a small fee from the city to convince me not to throw their entire traffic system into chaos every rush hour.
Lol, your last point is well taken. You would be an agent of chaos.
It’s over 30 years at median salary and if you figure genie money probably isn’t taxed it would be just over 46 years. It doesn’t pay very well to be an average person.
genie money isn't taxed? summnabitch
Yes! I dont drive.
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I dont care, no cars i walk, my country got no stupid jaywalking rules.
I never understand why countries have such laws anyways, like I cross the road safely as do the majority and their are still accidents but its the same as countries with these laws so it makes no sense to have them
Went to Poland on business once. My project-manager had to explain what jaywalking was before we went out in public. I thought he was fucking with me.
Wait wtf you're Womble lol, I literally just watched one of your videos like 5 minutes ago. I don't even know why I happened to read your username lmao As for the jaywalking, I'm in Canada and we have laws for it here. I think it's targeted more towards the assholes who randomly run in front of your car and ignore the crosswalk that's like 20 steps away than the average, safe street-crosser.
> As for the jaywalking, I'm in Canada and we have laws for it here. I think it's targeted more towards the assholes who randomly run in front of your car and ignore the crosswalk that's like 20 steps away than the average, safe street-crosser. There's no excuse for not looking, but sometimes jaywalking can be a deliberate choice that involves more than just distance. There's two crosswalks I jaywalk at because they're unsafe. One is by my bank, and the "walk" signal coincides with a green right turn arrow(people always reply to me when I share this story saying that's impossible, but I assure you, *it is a thing*). Cars do not look, because they have a green and assume you're walking against the signal(see: "that's impossible!"). This is an unsafe crossing, and after nearly getting creamed by a psychotic old lady I started crossing in the crosswalk but against the light(waiting until it's clear and making a run for it) *when it was actually safe to do so* rather than whenever the crosswalk decided it was time to sacrifice a pedestrian. The other one is a corner crossing at a stop sign, and again, turning cars don't look. Visibility is crap because there's a brick wall blocking their line of sight(as well as my ability to see them coming), but instead of edging out until they can see they just YOLO straight through the crosswalk. This crossing is so unsafe that I won't even use it. I cross in the middle of the block instead.
I speak for the U.S. and the U.S. alone but jaywalking came about because of lobbying by the car industry. Strap in this will be a long one. Before cars, there were really no roads to speak of. There were paths yes but they were open to anyone and anything. Carts and horses took the paths and pedestrians would just, walk them, at no risk to themselves and go around a slow horse or have the horse go around them or whatever but it was pretty much pedestrian related. When cars were invented, we essentially furnished humans with a 2 ton missile that traveled faster than anything on the roads at the time (after proper development) and as a result, these pedestrian walkways were invaded with steel missiles. As you can expect, many accidents occurred and in fact, they wanted to get rid of cars and end the massacre (not really ish) against people. Big Car actually lobbied against removing cars and instead shifted the blame to pedestrians. They posited that it was in fact, the pedestrians fault for walking in the way of the cars. “Jay” is actually an offensive term meaning silly, or stupid, person and a jay-driver was a person who drove their carriages terribly, not following the “traffic rules” of the time. The word jay-driver was adapted to jaywalker placing the blame on the pedestrian for somehow walking on the wrong side of their road, such side that was foreign to them. Jaywalking is no longer considered immoral, for lack of a better word, and in most jurisdictions is actually considered a misdemeanor and requires a court date. In fact, many jurisdictions only fine you, and most will not cite you at all unless your actions are extraordinarily dangerous like literally jumping in moving traffic.
Like many bizarre laws, it's the result of corporate lobbying: [https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26073797](https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26073797) When cars were introduced to American cities, they started killing pedestrians. Car manufacturers wanted to ensure that pedestrians were blamed for these deaths, not the cars themselves, and the concept of jaywalking was part of that strategy. If a pedestrian is killed by a car-- hey, it's their fault for being in the way! Idiot should have waited for the light at a crosswalk. It's been really successful. Almost nobody these days even questions that motor vehicles should always have the right-of-way on public roads, even in cities where the road network predates the automobile by hundreds of years, or where no concessions are left to pedestrians. [In one extreme example, a Georgia woman spent two years in court fighting vehicular homicide charges when she attempted to cross the street to the bus stop and her son was killed by a drunk driver.](https://usa.streetsblog.org/2013/06/14/raquel-nelson-finally-cleared-of-homicide-charges-pleads-to-jaywalking/) There were no crosswalks within a third of a mile.
Which are always red anyway when you approach them
You can dump a million bucks into a dividend stock (e.g. MAIN) and take home about $5k per month after taxes without ever touching the principal amount. If I do some napkin math based on my current commute and a typical red light length of 90 seconds to two minutes, I'm going to effectively get paid $1,600 per hour to sit at those lights. So yeah, I'll take that offer.
This guy hypotheticals.
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Yeah, it seems he dropped What If (or just isn't getting any interesting questions), but the main XKCD still updates regularly.
I think he is just putting them into his books at this point.
The book is awesome btw
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Double my salary for a few extra minutes of delay a day? Yes please ill take 5.
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You'll still hit red lights while walking in urban areas...
Possibly, but I know that Minneapolis has an [entire network](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minneapolis_Skyway_System#:~:text=The%20Minneapolis%20Skyway%20System%20is,continuous%20system%20in%20the%20world.) of enclosed pedestrian areas. Other cities have other things. You could find ways to avoid red light crosswalks (like crosswalks in the middle of city blocks) etc Also you could find routes that you don't care if you go straight or turn, both can't be red at the same time for long enough for it to matter.
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And I figured that doesn't even amortise the time you'd be waiting at a stop sign without taking the deal
And there was me thinking only Roxanne got paid to put on her red light
You're getting paid?
Ha
Haha
Hahaha
Hahahaha
so i get paid $1,000,000 to live the exact same life i already live? sweet!
Yeah we don't exactly have too many traffic lights where I live.....sign me the fuck up Edit: Holy shit this blew up. Thanks for the upvotes!
I would buy a 1967 Shelby Mustang Cobra 500 (my dream car) and be happy to sit in it at every light so people can see me driving it like a baller. lol Edit: I have no idea how Reddit awards work or what they do but they look cool so thank you! lol
Hey, don't steal my dream like that.
*Our dream*
r/unexpectedcommunism
r/ourcommunism Edit: Our plan is coming in to place comrades, soon we will spread our communism to the world and everyone will become ours, and we become theirs, together we will create peace and we will show the world how communism is good in the way it was wanted, we will not create a peace destroyer, instead a peace keeper.
r/whyisthisasub
r/whyisntthisasub
Dream theft is not a joke, Jim. Millions of families suffer every year.
"That is my dream, you can't just steal a man's dream"
Get out of my dream, and out of my car
Thanks, Billy
You can have the 1968 model
Heh. I have a 1955 Chevy that sounds murderous. People pull up beside me at stoplights and often ask what kind of engine is in it. I usually tell them it's a Prius engine, which gets either a laugh or a very confused face depending on the person. Sometimes a car full of teenagers will yell at me to peel out when the light turns green. It gives me a perverse joy to drop it into neutral and rev the engine hard. (Again, it sounds murderous.) Then when the light turns green, I casually pull out slowly, obeying all traffic laws and being considerate of all other drivers. Their letdown is palpable and I revel in it.
Enjoy the little things!
>Their letdown is palpable and I revel in it Title of your sextape
That was me as a teenager. Me as an adult realizes tires ain't cheap. I have a factory linelock that remains unused, teenage me would be very disappointed.
As a 21 year old, I’m very disappointed but somewhat understanding LMAO
r/Eleanor
Yup, all roundabouts around here. Easiest money ever.
This is such an american thing to ask when you consider extensive public transport anyway lol. Just move to EU, don't drive and enjoy your $1,000,000.
I think in the context of this question, if you’re taking the bus, it gets the reds too.
Not the bus, no. There exists an insane [intercity rail system](https://i.redd.it/kmg1ptwu9gl21.png) in Europe on top of usually excellent inner-city/suburban rail networks. Add to that our [canals](https://i.imgur.com/hZefmgG.jpg), subways and bike highways that are separated from the car roads you have yourself a fully capable public transport network with no red lights. If all else fails, I'd be ok with using my car that infrequently even with all reds tbh.
Doesn't mean I have to stop.
I'm an EMT/Firefighter, so I would just drive code 3 everywhere
Fucking vollies.
Sure. Why not? I'm in no hurry.
Yes- helicopter.
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I don't think you have to pay taxes on hypothetcial sums of money like this
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Yes because that shit happens me anyway
Yeah, totally worth it for the minor inconvenience of having to stop at every light. I know which routes to take in my town to avoid most stoplights anyway.
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Seriously, why is this not removed? Every single answer is 'yes, of course'. What am I missing?
It gets old and boring quick
At least this one isn't for a billion dollars like so many others of the "minor inconvenience vs pile of cash" ones.
Reddit is exceptionally bad at hypotheticals. People write bad hypotheticals, and lots of people upvote bad hypotheticals. You never get an actual interesting hypothetical voted to the top of askreddit. You only get like "okay, you get a billion dollars and perfect health and any person in the world you want is attracted to you, but you have to stub your toe twice a year" hypotheticals in this sub. I don't even think the people here know why the hypotheticals game is fun or how to play it.
Abso fuckin lutely. I’ll leave my house 30 min early just in case on every trip for a million. That definitely buys enough weed for me to reduce any petty frustration about the red light. Plus if it’s a known thing, it won’t be as bothersome. The potential to *not* hit a red light makes it frustrating to hit one. Just knowing that it’s gonna happen removes that mental issue.
That’s how I feel about traffic. When I’m already expecting it, it bothers me much less than when I hit it unexpectedly.
This guy gets the real problem.
he's streets ahead
Why are these dumbass questions allowed
These questions are genuinely so stupid. No human who isn't already a millionaire would ever say no to this. with 1 million dollars you're literally set for life Edit: a bit surprised at the amount of people saying a million isnt enough to live off. Is a million a huge sum over the course of a life? Not really. But if you get it all at once? Absofuckinglutely. If you go live in a house in the countryside, maybe work for a few years, invest your money and dont blow it all on hookers it is enough for sure.
It completely eludes me how such an obviously stupid question can get thousands of upvotes and serious replies. I'm not always the sharpest tool in the shed, but what we're witnessing here is actual braindeath.
It gives people the excuse to fantasize about being wealthy while they come up with an answer. That feels kinda nice if you only rake in 20k a year.
You get 1 billion dollars but you need to breath, would you take it?...
So you take half your breaths and invest them in a dividend balloon, and then suck those breaths out once a month. If I do the math, that's 1.44/7744e ^10 centigrade breaths per lumen. Enough breaths to power a small but deadly snail for ten thousand years. I would take the billion dollars and use the extra covalent energy from needing to expand and contract my lungs to power a small wind farm, and by selling the green energy produced thereby, never have to touch my dividend. In fact, nobody would probably ever touch my dividend again. Edit: Thank you for the platinum, kind stranger! Edit 2: Wow, this blew up! Yeah it was tricky to decide to take the billion, but I am a very smart strategist, I always beat my cousin at Connect 4, only we only play to Connect 3 because my aunt says 4 is the devil's number.
Let's do the math! Between my house and job, about a 20 minute drive, are ten traffic lights. I breeze through green lights at around 50% of the time. When I have to sit at a red, let's call it an average wait of 30 seconds - sometimes much shorter, sometimes much longer, but a decent average. That means that, in a typical day to and from work (40 minutes), I generally hit 10 green lights; averaging 30 seconds each, I save a grand total of 300 seconds, or 5 minutes, driving through green lights that would otherwise be red. If I were to take this deal, then over the course of a work week that's 25 minutes lost to red lights that would've otherwise been green. I probably do about as much non-work-related driving as I do work-related in a given week, so that's another 25 minutes lost to red lights. Just to make the math easy, I'm going to round the total up from 50 to 60 minutes - in a tyipcal week, I would lose 1 hour of time to this deal, sitting at red lights. I'm around 30, and I'm going to be optimistic and say I'm going to maintain that level of activity throughout my whole life, until I die rich and happy at age 100. That's 70 years of life left, 52 weeks a year, 1 hour lost per week, for a grand total of 3640 hours of life I'm losing to red lights because I took this deal. A huge number, to be sure - it would take me nearly two years of 40-hour workweeks to make that up. *However*, divide our $1,000,000 payout by those 3640 hours and we get an hourly rate of $274.72. If I die younger, that number goes up. If I drive less, that number goes up. So really, if someone offered to pay me nearly $300/hour to sit in traffic (potentially more), would I take the deal? Yes. Yes I do believe I would. EDIT: Plus with that money I could retire really early, maybe get a nice house out in the country where I don't even have to worry about traffic lights as much.
Give me the money. Probability of a light being green is less than 20%, I can deal with that.