The Red Light

Crossing a road in Germany is subject to very strict expectations. Like in most European countries, and like in most wealthy cities (Germany is very wealthy), there are traffic lights which indicate, with green and red lights, whether you can go or not. Green, you go. Red, you stay. Traffic lights and driving regulations are both designed and implemented in order to prevent crashes between travellers and the potential lethal consequences to such crashes. They are two faces of the same coin: one material (the light), and one normative (the rule).

In case no one is about to cross your path Let’s say anyone is at least 200 meters for an engine, 50 meters for a bike, and 10 meters for a pedestrian. , and you decide to go while your light is red, two things can happen. On a theoretical level, you risk a fine, according to a certain article of the rule of law. On a practical level, pedestrians might yell at you that the light is red. Car drivers in the distance might accelerate to remind you that they are in their right, and that you are in their way. In any case, you are breaking the rule, and reminders exist both vertically (a police fine), and horizontally (someone yelling at you).

The fact that people can yell at you when there are no cars around drives me crazy.

It drives me crazy because it is a clear manifestation of misunderstanding of the rules, and of misdirected attention to the others. Traffic lights and traffic rules are consequences of the potential for vehicles to crash. If there are no vehicles On the most massive roads (highways), where there are only vehicles, the absence of traffic lights shows that they do not regulate people. They regulate cars. Highways are temples to unbridled automobile power, flight lines that only make sense through gasoline. , there is no potential for a crash, and so there are no justifications for traffic lights and regulations. In neighborhoods with very narrow one-way streets and sparse traffic, crossings often do not feature red lights. People look, cross and survive.

This misunderstanding of rules, then, consists in seeing them as ends rather than means. If the light is red, I shall stop, no matter what. If the light is green, I shall go, no matter what. It is blind to the fact that the lights mediate between us and the other travellers. In the case of a conflict Who should go first? you? me? The old lady? , it provides a decision by being a shared authority.

When people yell at you in Germany, they sometimes yell Asi! Asozial, that is. . You are an asocial, because you do not respect—or worse, you reject—the shared authority of the rules (just like when you skip the line, do not walk on your side of the sidewalk, etc.). You reject the norms that govern our common life. But the misunderstanding precisely on overlooking that sociality is not exclusively, not even mainly, dependent on explicit, context-free rules.

Generally, one of the reasons we have rules is to ground our trust in the behavior of strangers. We do not know whether the other wants to go or not, so wo agree on the rule that the one coming from the right has priority, that the person exiting the building should do so before a person entering a building—unless the former is in a clearly better physical condition than the latter—, that the last come is the last served, etc. Rules prevent us from having to constantly renegotiate actions in everyday situations. Through structure, they manages expectations. They prevents chaos By now, you’ve noticed this is really just an arbitrary rant extrapolating from the rare behaviour of some people. But if you’re interested in rules in general, I recommend checking Lorraine Daston’s Rules: A Short History of What We Live By . It tames the stranger.

Taming the stranger means that rules, and not subjective individuality or contextual environment, will define our expectation of how the unknown will behave. By taking over personhood and context, rules also run the risk of overshadowing that the stranger is also, and first of all, a human. The figure crossing at the red light is first a stranger And strangers are important. , then only trespassing stranger. One of the tricks of jaywalking safely is to make eye contact You can also make physical contact, but physical contact in contemporary urban life is never a good sign with the incoming vehicle. It reminds them your are human.

I consider that the relationship should rather be inverse: first assess the humans, then resort to the rules. Assume good will For instance, a desire to survive, and a desire not to kill. . Rules are a recourse in a conflict, but it does not mean that conflict automatically arises from the breaking of rules. It is always possible for parties involved in a conflict to resolve it without having to resort to external rules.

One way to do that is to consider the purpose of the rules and the reality of the environment. Are there any vehicles? Is anyone about to be in danger? Should I really be waiting on the edge of the sidewalk Granted, there is a definite charm to waiting at the red light, to extracting yourself from the flow of things for a few seconds. , alone at 2am, until a machine tells me it’s OK to walk? If you let the rules become the only environment, you get weird behavior. I bet the people yelling at those who cross at the red light are the same people who cross at the green light without looking at the traffic By crossing at the green light without looking around, you might be able to claim insurance fees once you get hit since you were respecting the law, but you might also get seriously injured. . The fact that the light is green does not magically prevent cars, scooters or bicycles from running you over. People can be momentarily dumb.

Paying attention to the actual situation should take precedence on whether the little man has changed color. Focusing on rules takes you out of the reality of the world, on what is actually happening around, about whether or not there is an actual conflict, or an actual danger. It can hide you where you are, when you are, who you are with. Sometimes, this might be what you want; most times, you should remember this is the primary function of rules.

The traffic lights rule ingnore their (and our) immediate environment, they eschwer the current material conditions of reality, and highlight idealized relationships, materialized by blinking infrastructure on the side of asphalt dedicated to the high-speed circulation to ever-growing, multi-ton vehicles. This is a form of false consciousness, distorting our perceptions of the world and of others.

Rules abstract away your relationship with other humans. Abstraction, however, is also dehumanization. It is no longer you as a living being, capable of awareness, caring for the safety of other people, but rather as the subject of regulation, co-existing with others through regulation. In considering someone as being anybody, I can picture a slippery slope towards considering them as nobody.

Yes, rules solve the problem of trusting strangers, because it is tiresome to constantly evaluate and establish ad hoc trust relationships with anyone we encounter. However, rules, should not replace our ability and capacity to trust. If I cross the red light with a car in the distance, I trust that they will take a few seconds of their time to slow down and let someone survive. Legally, it might be the wrong move, Morally, it might not be too much to ask. Instead of establishing our base assumption on the almighty prevalence of the traffic light, we could also establish our base assumption on the fact that people do not want to deliberately die, and people do not want to deliberately kill. It works in other places.

So when I am at a crossroads, with no cars in sight, when I cross the red light, and when a pedestrian yells that I broke the rules, it makes me sad. It makes me sad that they do not take the time to assess the reality of life, that they interject at a stranger, and become police by proxy, hoping to restore discipline and order in a situation where there is not even chaos.

The irony of this situation shines in all its blinding absurdity when night falls. Berlin is the only city I know where, after 23:00, they turn off some of the traffic lights. Before that time, the green and red lights rule as if they were the direct messiahs of the Heavens above. And then, at some point, fuck it, we unplug them, and our lives carry on, and we remember we can take care of ourselves through mutual, interpersonal attention.