Incident During Freezone’s Drive Home Friday Afternoon

On my way home from work Friday afternoon, I was driving down Main Street in Johnson City heading to my house in Endicott with my windows down and 99 1 The Whale on my radio.

When I got to when I got the intersection with Avenue D, I could see the light was red at Isabel Place and traffic was backed up to the intersection at Avenue D. My light was green, but if I proceeded into the intersection, I would have been blocking that intersection which is against the law. So I did what you're supposed to do and stopped at the crosswalk and waited for the traffic in front of me to clear the intersection.

I looked in the rearview mirror and there was a guy in a pickup truck behind me that looked a little perplexed as to why I stopped at a green light. Then I hear someone mumbling something. When I looked over my left shoulder I saw a guy standing near the corner by Giblin's Pub talking on his phone.

The man starts yelling at me saying, “what are you waiting for the light is green”. I looked at him and thought to myself, what difference does it make to you, you're just standing there on your phone. He wasn't even trying to cross the street or anything.

So I was going to ignore him until he yelled “moron, the light is green”. That's when I looked over to him and said “it's illegal to block the intersection”. It's true, you can look it up for yourself here. The man he yelled back “the light is green, what are you waiting for”. Again I yelled back it's illegal to block the intersection I can't go anywhere.

At that point the cars in front of me started to move so I started rolling into the intersection, just then yelled something again in my direction. So I gave him the Hawaiian salute and continue down Main Street.

Meanwhile I could tell the guy in the pickup truck behind me was also getting upset. I'll say it again, it is illegal to block an intersection. If you can't make it through the intersection you are supposed to stop before entering the intersection.

This is especially important in that area with the hospital right around the corner, there's constantly ambulances flying through there.

So I figured I would write an article about this, a public service if you will, so you don't make an ass out of yourself like this guy did, by telling somebody the light is green when they can't go anywhere.