The strangest thing about 1980s TV series The Dukes of Hazzard is that Bo and Luke Duke never use their hazard lights to get away with committing a crime. Given their surnames, and the fact that they are two moonshine runners on probation living in the Georgia woods of Hazzard County, armed with crossbows, at constant odds with county commissioner Boss Hogg, you’d think that anytime they were being chased by Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane they’d turn on the hazard lights on their 1969 Dodge Charger “Robert E. Lee” and escape scot-free.
But they never do - not once - and it’s something that’s mystified me ever since I was a young lad watching the show, wondering why I felt funny every time their cousin Daisy Duke appeared on screen. Did Bo and Luke Duke not realize the immense power bestowed by hazard lights?
Everyone knows that hazard lights give the user unlimited, unrestricted freedom to commit any and all imaginable acts. Hazard lights render the driver impervious to insult, consequence, recrimination and culpability. Hazard lights are the equivalent of being “home free” in a game of tag. Once they’re on, you can do anything you want with utter impunity.
This truth may have been lost on the Duke Boys, but it is not lost on Canadian drivers. Hazard light abuse has always been a problem, one I’ve chronicled before, but I’m noticing it is on the rise. You can’t drive 10 minutes in most cities without getting blocked by someone who has switched on their hazard lights to attend to some emergency, such as buying a coffee, picking up take-out or simply blocking a lane for no reason.
I’m not referring to drivers who turn on their hazards and stop momentarily to drop off a passenger. I’m referring to drivers who switch on their hazards and block traffic for long stretches.
Is it a hazard to use four-way flashers while driving in a snowstorm?
Anyone with a licence should know that drivers should use their hazard lights when their vehicle is stationary and a potential danger for others using the road. That’s the accepted practice. Officially, it’s a little murky. Hazard light rules vary from province to province. The Ontario Highway Traffic Act, for instance, does not describe when hazard light use is not permissible. Drivers exploit this.
Over the last decade, municipalities have done their best to restrict driving. When they can, they’ve gotten rid of street parking, turned lanes into bike lanes and shortened the periods when parking is legal. To offset this restriction, they’ve offered inadequate, underfunded, sporadic, unpleasant, at times dangerous, public transit. They backed restrictions up with meager parking enforcement.
The result? Drivers now park wherever and whenever they want. Hazard lights are a polite charade. They are a shrug. Does the sign say, “No stopping between 4 and 6 p.m.”? Today, many drivers simply flick on their hazards and say, “Don’t worry, my hazard lights are on.”
It is not fine nor legal, but they get away with it.
Ask yourself, “Have I ever seen a driver ticketed for brazenly turning on their hazard lights and blocking traffic?”
I haven’t. Not one. I’ve seen a bicyclist ticketed for “speeding” but I have never seen a pizza-slice-buying-dry-cleaning-getting-hazard-light-using driver ticketed.
Don’t worry. The authorities will come after you for other stuff.
If your eavestroughs are not properly connected, you’ll be contacted by city officials on multiple occasions. Of that you can be certain. Did you look sideways at a tree while holding an axe? There’ll be a knock at your door.
But hazard light abuse? Never.
Frodo’s “One Ring” is a trinket from a Cracker Jack box, compared to the hazard lights on a Honda Civic. Forget the One Ring. All the Dark Lord Sauron needed was four hazard lights and a few Orc chauffeurs and he would have conquered Middle Earth faster than a hazards-using driver can park in a no-stopping zone during rush hour and then stroll into a Timmies.
If J.R.R. Tolkien had any ambition he would have found inspiration in them.
Four Lights
Four Wheels for the Commuting Drones under the phosphorous sky,
Four for the Drivers in construction zone
Nine Podcasts for Mortal Men doomed to die,
Four Flashing Lights for the Drivers who call the Bike Lane home
On the Streets and Highways where the traffic lies.
Four Lights to rule them all, Four Lights to blind them,
Four Lights to block the roads and on the byways bind them
On the Streets and Highways where the traffic lies.