Streets turn mean when lights turn red.

Byline: Bob Welch / The Register-Guard

Whatever happened to stopping at red lights?

Recently, I was waiting in my pickup at a red light near Jerry's Home Improvement on Highway 99. I was turning left (north), having just looped around the off-ramp from Belt Line. The light turned green. I readied to hit the gas.

Suddenly, a southbound car zipped through the intersection - and through a light redder than a wild cherry Lifesaver - at about 55 mph. Had I not hesitated I'd be dead or writing this column from PeaceHealth.

Is it just me or are more drivers than ever treating red lights with a sort of "me-first" nonchalance?

"It's not just you," says Sgt. Derel Schulz, who heads up the Eugene Police Department's traffic enforcement unit. "There's been a definite increase in running reds. When seeing yellow, people used to think: `I can stop.' Now they think: 'I can make it through.' '

"The problem has gotten worse," says Rick Ubel, a Eugene-Springfield driving instructor with 30 years of experience under his seat belt. "I show my students Villard and Franklin and in five minutes they'll see three flagrant violations."

Recently, a car cut in front of me while turning west from Coburg Road to the Belt Line on-ramp - clearly against a red signal. When I laid on the horn, the male driver flipped me off.

Welcome to The New Entitlement - drivers who think it's OK to break the most basic traffic law on the books, and to dis those of us who notice.

The law hasn't changed a bit. `A driver facing a steady circular yellow signal is thereby warned that the related right of way is being terminated and that a red or flashing red light will be shown immediately. A driver facing the light shall stop. ...' (ORS 811.260, Section 3.)

But the unwritten rules have changed. `When you're waiting for a light to turn green, remember that green doesn't mean `go' anymore,' Ubel says. `It means `look.' '

And proceed if some bonehead isn't racing through the intersection. Or boneheads. "You sometimes see two or three going through a red at a time," says Springfield Acting Police Chief Rich Harrison, who, too, has seen the problem escalate.

Last spring, Eugene's Schulz and a team of six officers worked the Seventh and Chambers intersection (US Bank). In a five-hour period, they wrote 50 tickets for red-light violators.

"And we cited only the most egregious offenders," Schulz says. Basically, the team went after only drivers whose cars were a quarter of the way through the intersection (or less) when the light turned red.

When I heard the "50-ticket" bit, I could hardly believe it. So Schulz invited me to meet him at the same intersection. I agreed. It was midmorning Monday. Traffic was light, meaning less chance for offenses than at, say, 5 p.m. We charted the first 10 cycles of traffic eastbound on Seventh Avenue.

In nine of 10 cases, at least one car was still in the intersection with the light turned red; technically, they'd broken the law. In three of 10 cases, the violations were severe enough that drivers probably would have been cited.

"Some of these people were literally half a block away from the intersection when they saw the light go yellow," Schulz says. "The brakes on cars are very good these days. They could easily have stopped."

We repositioned ourselves at Coburg Road and Martin Luther King Boulevard (Union 76), another hot spot for red-runners. We charted the first 10 cycles of traffic turning south or north off MLK onto Coburg. In eight cases, a red-light violation occurred, all but one severe enough that drivers would have been cited.

More traffic on the streets. Less patience in the driver's seat. And traffic patrols stretched thin. All make for intersections regulated less by law and more by conscience.

So I'll leave a question for those who think red lights are meant for everybody but them: Will you shrug them off so easily in the emergency room - when it's the car driven by your spouse or friend or sibling or you that was T-boned by someone who ran one?