2 Minute Time Limit (107)

Two minutes.  Not much time.  And yet . . .

It is time you can use to answer several e mails or texts, or read two or three short news updates, or check your stock reports or make a quick phone call.

Two minutes is the amount of cycle time for most of our traffic lights.  I am not thrilled with this because on my morning commute I end up stopped more than I go and it doesn’t matter if I drive fast, slow, or in between.  I have had people from the ‘green St Louis’ team say if you drive the right speed you will end up with all green lights.  But, that just isn’t true.  If you hit one red, you will hit all of them red.  If you hit one green light you will invariably end up hitting all the rest red. I implore you to prove me wrong on this.

Or, you could just get in the car with me some morning and find out for yourself.

What I have done, since I am a ‘time counter,’ is figured out how to make the time productive. I didn’t like sitting at stop light after stop light being impatient and angry about the waste of time, not to mention the waste of gasoline. What I started doing was timing each light to see how much time was available for other activity. OK. Some stop lights are a mere 1.5 minutes and some are 2.0 to 3.0 minutes. Most of them in my particular drive area are exactly 2 minutes. I have figured out what I can accomplish in various amounts of time and have managed to create a way to use the time productively. Also, when I don’t have something to do during the ‘down’ time of the stop light, I use the time to relax. I know when I stop that I will have 2 minutes to chill or to listen to something good on the radio or a CD. This keeps me from becoming anxious or impatient.

I always look at my dash clock as soon as I see the light turn red, then, according to what I want to accomplish, I start doing whatever while keeping one eye on the clock. When two minutes are up, I know it is time to pay attention and maybe start moving forward in the traffic lane. It would be great if other people also did this because I am sure some people doze off at stop lights. In Chicago it seems to be appropriate to honk as soon as the light turns green, thus alerting the people at the front of the line they should start moving. In St Louis we are more polite. Sometimes we sit through an entire green light behind someone that has phased out and doesn’t move during the go cycle. This is aggravating to those behind the staller but we wouldn’t want to seem impolite by honking at him/her to alert him/her of the error.

You may think it is obsessive of me to be concerned about traffic light timing. You are right. But, like I said, I am a counter and it’s not good to pretend otherwise. It is a pretty helpful obsession sometimes. Other times, not so much.

Just to leave you with something to consider: It takes most people approximately 2 minutes to read 560 words.

This post is definitely stop light material.