Caught

Driving Rachel to the mechanic's this morning to pick up our Taurus and put it out to pasture, I bent a few rules.  Most flagrantly, I went through a light that some people might have called red and came within a second of being hit by some minivan driver who gunned it as soon as his turned green without paying attention to me turning left in front of him.  (Please note that "a second" is plenty of time in most situations, including this one.)

Rachel was not amused and told me so.  (Which made Matthew think that telling me that he was not amused either was a good idea.  It was not.)  But that was not the end of it: one of Rachel's friends saw us.  She called Rachel's cell: "Are you in labor?  I saw how Jonathan was driving!"  

That was a little embarassing.  Fortunately, the mechanic was right after the intersection and I got to switch cars, or I probably would have gotten an extra dose of Not Amused.

But, in my defense, Rachel had just finished explaining to me that Thou Shalt Not Brake Hard with a pregnant wife in the car.  So, faced with the choice of braking hard at the light or going through, I went through.

When pregnant wives are not invovled I am normally very good about complying with this particular traffic law.  (And for the record I would like to point out that my one ticket in 15 years of driving is probably substantially below average.)  In Utah, it's legal as long as you're in the intersection before it turns red, so most lights give a little leeway between red in one direction and green in another.  This one did not.