By Aarne Frobom, NMA Member
On Saturday nights, PBS-TV used to broadcast “The Red Green Show,” a Canadian comedy show with an actor named Steve Smith portraying an aging resident of a remote town in northern Ontario. Each show featured a minute of folksy wisdom by Uncle Red, delivered while tying flies.
One of these was written around the line, “Too late is your friend,” advising his audience of slightly-more-than-middle-aged men that it’s not a disaster if you’re too late in jumping into something—a new fad, a dubious business scheme, a spur-of-the-moment impulse. Being too late can save you, and delaying a decision can make you look smarter than you are.
I don’t remember the rest of the skit, although I’m sure it was funny. But that phrase has stuck with me.
Too late is frequently your friend when driving. I repeat it to myself when I arrive at a junction too late to charge into a fast-closing gap in traffic. Or when I’m tempted to turn left across a busy highway.
My daughter watched Red Green with me even though it was way past her bedtime, and when she was learning to drive I recalled the phrase to her. I think she got the point.
Too late is a gift of time to stop and use your eyes and head. This goes double if your eyes aren’t what they used to be. Or if your head is worried about other concerns.
The phrase is the antidote to that moment of teeth-gnashing rage that happens when you miss a chance to turn left, or when a signal changes in your face. My dad was not a patient driver, but his version of the phrase was, “Just in time to be late!” No one knew the word mantra back then, but this chant let him resign himself to fate, and was his alternative to cursing the entire universe for traffic delays.
Too late means never getting frantic. There will always be another chance to change lanes out of a line of slow traffic. Are you sure there’s nothing in the lane to your left? You think so, huh? Take another look. You’ve got time.
All this is another way of saying that good driving is smooth and deliberate. No quick moves. Deliberate doesn’t mean slow, just thoughtful. That includes slowing down along with speeding up.
When a signal turns yellow and you’re too late to stop without sliding into the crosswalk, stay off the brake and drive on through if the way is clear–even if you see a glimmer of red light as you pass under the signal. That’s what the all-red phase is for. A panic stop risks a rear-end collision, and stopping when you don’t have to does no favors for the drivers in line behind you. An extra car in the queue of stopped vehicles just slows everybody down when the red light turns green.
As Red Green said, “Remember, I’m pulling for you. We’re all in this together.”
Aarne Frobom is an NMA member with 46 years of experience in transportation planning and policy for a state highway agency. He’s accumulated 52 years of crash-free driving. He’s been driving for 53 years. The difference between these two numbers will be the subject of a future posting on this blog.
