The Knight Life by Keith Knight for February 17, 2021

In court, proving that a turn signal was not on is hard. Since while it is blinking it is only on about half the time, “The officer may not have been looking at the right time…” Tickets for using your phone might be a better bet.

Many cops are crappy drivers too. Then there are those who turn on their lights so they don’t have to sit at a traffic signal.

If the cops ticketed everyone who didn’t use their turn signals, New Jersey would run out of blank ticket forms in about 38 minutes…

Exercising my white old lady privilege, I once pulled up next to a cop at a traffic light, rolled down my window and said, “Sir, I think your left rear turn signal lamp is burned out.”

“It works,” he said.

“Must be an intermittent short then,” I replied, “because it didn’t come on when you changed lanes in front of me, back there.”

He grimaced and rolled up his window, but for at least the next few miles, as he sped away, I could see him using his turn signal as he wove through traffic.

Around here Jay-walkers tend to thin themselves out trying to cut across traffic lanes. Unfortunately it also causes lots of traumatized drivers who end up hitting and often killing them in the middle of the evening rush hours. I have little sympathy for someone who refuses to walk less than a hundred feet to a painted cross-walk and then legally stop traffic.