Just because you can’t see the red light doesn’t give you an excuse to brute force your way into an intersection.
Downtown Chicago driver and Redditor /u/WhyWires shared headshaking dashcam footage from earlier in December to the /r/IdiotsInCars subreddit showing an ignorant lady driver brute forcing her way through this intersection because she couldn’t be bothered with confirming if she had a red light or not.
Check out how red light running slow roll below with the original Reddit thread linked here.
The incident happened at the intersection of N Clark St. and W Wilson Ave. (exact location on Google Maps linked here.)
As the dashcam footage shows, OP is stopped, headed southbound on N Clark St.
Just as he gets the green, a CTA bus already in the intersection and facing a yellow that turned red, completes its turn.
It seems an elderly woman driver in a Toyota 4Runner, facing the rear of said CTA bus and with no clear view of her traffic light, assumes that, because she couldn’t see the light and the bus completed its turn, she could simply follow the bus with no idea if she was entering on a green or red.
She runs the red light, quite slowly, and waves at OP to apologize for her assumption.
“Yeah, there’s still a certain amount of entitlement going on here…”I was inconvenienced by a large vehicle, so in return, I get to ignore one traffic safety device; it is only fair,” /u/Word1_Word2_4Numbers aptly put it.
“I would advise not entering a traffic light-controlled intersection if you can’t verify that the light is green,” /u/Pork_Chompk added.
“You would advise following the law and exercising good judgment and a reasonable standard of conduct,” /u/Someth1ng_Went_Wr0ng lightly sarcastically replied.
In Chicago, running a red light (especially at a camera-enforced intersection) typically results in a $100 fine (which can double to about $200 if unpaid on time) and does not add points to your driver’s license because camera tickets are treated as non-moving civil infractions. If an officer stops you and issues a standard traffic ticket, fines can be higher, and those moving violations could add points under Illinois law, though camera violations alone won’t affect your point total. (horwitzlaw.com)
