Driver Runs A Red Light In Front Of The Police

“SUV Runs Red Light Right in Front of Police,” the feel good movie of the year! That’s because we love to see highway justice served (except when it happens to us).Show more

We don’t want to be judgmental, of course, because we don’t know what was going through the SUV driver’s mind when he decided to turn left through the red light, which is even more remarkable when you consider there was a fully marked police car at the head of the lane next to the one he was turning into. But, man, is it aggravating when wisenheimers flaunt traffic laws, especially red light laws. Buzzing through a red light is so dangerous.

Did you see how this one played out? The vehicle recording the incident is stopped at a red light at the head of an intersection, alongside a police cruiser on his left. The traffic light ahead of the cruiser then turned green. The police officer—from a municipality only identifiable as Cary, lurches forward, attempting to go, since the officer had the green light. All of a sudden, a white SUV with a ladder on the roof cuts in front of the police car. It looks like the SUV driver chose to try to beat the light. That was literally a near miss. If the officer hadn’t hit the brakes, there would have been an accident then and there, and the white SUV would have been “t-boned”, possibly injuring—or worse, the driver and passengers of the SUV.

What happens then is predictable. You can imagine the SUV driver, seeing a police cruiser almost ramming him, saying to his passenger, “Oh, God, he’s gonna pull me over,” and he would be right. After allowing the SUV to continue through the intersection, the police car does a U-turn, the flashing lights go on, and the rest is history. The driver of the car video recording the event cheers, “Yeah, that’s right!”

When we see someone else being pulled over for breaking the law in such egregious ways, like going through a red light or speeding through a school zone, let’s say, it makes us feel like the universe is a just place a cop happens to be nearby. We find ourselves on the side of the law at that moment, and think ourselves entitled to be indignant and self-righteous. Humans are predictable in this way. We want to identify with the demographic that’s in power, and in United States and Canadian society that tends to be the law abiding citizen. It is weirdly ironic that much of our folklore heroes are just the opposite, the outlaws and renegades, such as the Dukes of Hazard. Often we justify our admiration for such outlaws by adjusting their circumstances as subversive heroes, persecuted by corrupt local governments and abusive police, something like modern day Robin Hoods.

It’s unlikely anything like a Robin Hood complex is being acted out in this scene. We’ll chalk it off to a stupid mistake someone made in a moment of carelessness.