Driver's Ed

Last night, a brief but nasty storm inevitably left a couple traffic signals on flash mode.

Pop quiz, hotshot: If you're approaching a traffic light that's flashing yellow (amber) do you...
a) proceed through the intersection with caution or
b) treat the intersection as an all-way stop?

If you said a), congratulations and thank you. If you said b), you are like all the other drivers I saw on the road last night. Learn the rules, people! You're mixing this up with when the power is out completely and there are no lights on. I driving along Univerisity Ave, and the lights at Seagram (the entrance of UW) are on flash. There's about 10 cars in front of me, and they all come to a complete stop while we had the flashing yellow, even though there was no one waiting on Seagram. Then a car came to a stop on Seagram and the people in front of me stopped and let him go first. Quite frustrating... there's wasn't that much traffic, so he'd only have to wait another 10 seconds.

Treat it like a (non all-way) stop sign.

Don't believe me? Take a refresher course from the Driver's Handbook.