Every morning I open my eyes and wake up to the honking of horns.
From my home window you can see the Mesgar intersection/the busy train, and a little after it, on the way to work, I pass the La Guardia interchange on Ayalon Road.
It would not be an exaggeration to say that this is one of the busiest areas in Israel: Hasmar Street connects the city center to the south and is packed with public transportation;
Countless buses arrive at the Railway Street directly from the central station, and the interchange connects those coming from the main road to one of Tel Aviv's bustling business centers.
Every morning I watch what is happening from home and on the way to work, and every morning I am amazed anew how stupid the Israeli driver is, sorry.
28.11.22 16:01, photo: Raz Israeli
The Israelis, it is well known, are not suckers, but neither are they particularly smart.
Otherwise, how do you explain that every day, without exception, every morning, noon and evening, every hour and every two minutes on the clock, that the sound of the horns deafens the ears as if here, the day has come when my horn will cause some miracle to happen after the fact, time will skip backwards or forwards God, you will be wounded and come, lift the car up to the top and skip with it from Adanat in peace to our abode.
But it's not the horns that drive me crazy - you can get used to them.
Nevertheless, I have lived in Israel for more than 40 years.
This is the basic lack of understanding that if I enter a busy intersection and stay there when the traffic light changes, I have harmed everyone much more than I have caused myself.
18.12.22 16:36, photo: Raz Israeli
This decision, to tweet about such a trivial law, stems from the existential need to save another stop at a traffic light.
A need - and not a thought, because if the wise man had thought for a moment he would have come to the opposite conclusion.
Because you may have saved two precious minutes in your cunning, but while standing in the middle of the road, blocking the way for those coming from the other direction, sometimes trailing behind a puppet bus driver and sometimes parked at a crosswalk, you left many others to continue standing at the traffic lights, cursing you for being born and honking, oh, how many honk.
2.1.23 09:08, photo: Raz Israeli
Because you may have saved two minutes, but you wasted a whole hour for others, at the very least.
The calculation is simple: for every traffic offender who enters a full intersection and settles in it, 30 or more other honking owners are delayed, forced to continue standing in frustration at the traffic light, and only the bikers who have already wedged themselves between cars, scratch doors and lower mirrors, forcing pedestrians to overtake them around the crosswalk into the road himself and look them in the eyes without a hint of shame, manage to catch the green despite your wickedness.
After all, it is an unending chain of limitless inconsideration, literally.
If you had obeyed the law and waited another minute - okay, two - you would have saved many others the time you forced them to keep waiting.
Today you are the blocker, but tomorrow you will be the blocker, and you will also honk, oh-oh as much as you honk.
The rage that will boil in your body will erupt into a superhero movement straight forward to the center of the steering wheel, you will curse the maniac who delayed you at another red light, as if you were not the one who yesterday, in an elaborate ruse, delayed dozens, because you just wanted to save two minutes.
8.1.23 08:28, photo: Raz Israeli
And the pedestrians, what are they to blame?
Children on the way to school are often easy prey in the jungle of Israeli vehicles, forced to crawl because of you between smoking exhausts and dirty bumpers.
And if you the idiot is a bus driver - they will also risk their lives going out into the road to get to the other side, if they even noticed the change of light at the traffic light because the big vehicle completely hid it.
And police officers?
what is there to say
There is a police station a few meters from the intersection in question.
Cars pass there constantly and give the feeling that if these are the people who are supposed to keep the law, it is no wonder that every day, hour and minute, chaos dominates the traffic.
To you, the Israeli driver, "obeying" the law sounds like a defeatist act.
What if you obey, the world will die, I won't come out a sucker, just a bit dumb.
8.1.23 08:33, photo: Raz Israeli
10.1.23 08:14,
were we wrong
We will fix it!
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