The Rules Apply to Everyone but Me

No, I'm not talking about me in particular. I'm talking about people who think that way. You know these types you can tell by the way they act.

Here's a story about one such person. This happened near my office.

I need to do a little set up first. The district has traffic control officers. Their job is to as you might have guessed it is to direct traffic. The idea is to prevent intersections from getting blocked and producing gridlock. You seem them at rush hour. And you know what they actually do prevent gridlock. Just goes to show that if you follow the rules, it really does make a difference.

Now on to my story. The street near my office is one way. It has three lanes for traffic and a lane for parking on each side of the street. Now the actually lanes of traffic are set up this way. The far left lane is a left turn only lane. The next lane to the right you are allowed to turn left or go straight. The far right lane you can go straight. (You can't make a right hand turn because you'd be turning the wrong way on a one-way street.) One finally thing to add is that there is a left turn arrow and you are only allowed to turn left when you have that arrow.

This is the scene I come upon. There is a women in the far left hand lane. She has started her left hand turn and is into the cross walk. The left turn arrow is red. The traffic control officer has signaled for this women to stop. The left turn arrow turns green but there are people still crossing the street. The women making the left turn decides since she has the light she'll make the turn even if she turns in front of pedestrians. The traffic control officer puts up her hand for the women to stop. The women decides she doesn't need to obey the officer and comes close to hitting a pedestrian. And the reason the women in the car did this was she didn't want to miss out on a parking place.

I have to say this is one of the times I'd like to have had a policeman present so this women would have gotten a ticket.

Oh and kicker when the women got out of her car she bitched at the traffic officer.

I guess we should have all realized that the rules don't apply to her.