I've only been at my new job a little over a month so I had yet to deal with school traffic. Yesterday, I left around 3:00, made a right onto Bell St. and came up to a traffic light. There were two cars ahead of me; the car directly in front of me was turning right but I couldn't see what the first car was doing. The light was green...nobody was moving. The light turned red; I thought maybe the driver of the first car was on their phone or something, and I was annoyed. Bell Street is fairly narrow and there's a drop off on one side. After sitting through the green light AGAIN, I was wondering if the first car had broken down. There's not much room to go around...it was only after the third green light had come and gone that I realized everyone was trying to turn on to Philomethian St. to pick up their little darlings from elementary school. I was undecided if there's no busses (I doubt it; the town I work in is pretty upscale and the residents mostly upper to VERY upper class) or if parents just preferred to pick up their kids in person. During the fourth light, with no traffic moving in either direction because literally everyone else was waiting to turn down Philomethian, I did something very illegal: I zipped out into the opposite lane and passed the two cars in front of me so I could (finally!) go through the green light.
When Dad worked for Carquest, he used to deliver parts to a garage on Philomethian. He nodded sagely when I mentioned the traffic jam and immediately knew the cause of it.
