A question for me to answer.

This one is from Sara in Florida.

Joe,
Do you have any idea why people in Florida seem to think red lights are optional?

Good question Sara, and not as easy to answer as one would think. First off, you could tell yourself that people who just drive on through a red light without a care in the world, are just rude, self important jerks, that believe they can break any law they wish and endanger others lives just because they are more important than others. You could use this point of view but, since the same phenomenon happens on the west coast as well, I am afraid it would fall flat. everyone who has been to California before knows that those kinds of people don't live here. The problem we share with people driving through red lights actually can be traced to something called,"The Coastal Prismatic Glare Effect". The CPGE occurs when airborne particles of salt water react to light rays from the sun. The effect is a floating prism, like an invisible water lens, that can momentarily confuse the eye, actually making the things look upside down or even change the colors of a certain object. So now you will want to know why the major effect is at stop lights. To answer that I will have to explain heat exchange ratios, which could take a long time, so I shall sum it up. Streets are highly polluted, hot zones in any major coastal area. Heat and pollution from engine emissions get caught on the streets and circulate as the traffic passes. An intersection is what the science community calls a "dead zone", where the traffic slows and thusly, so does the circulation of the heat and pollution. This "dead zone" has a standing pocket of hot exhaust which forms a bubble that the human eye can not see. That bubble, usually about ten to twelve feet high, is where the water salt water prism rests. This puts the prism directly between the driver and the stop light. As to what the driver sees, well that I can't tell you, it varies from eye to eye. It is highly probable, however, that what they see at a red light is perceived, by them, to be a green light since as I had covered, the light could be upside down and a different color as seen through the prism. The bad side of this is these people could cause accidents but the good side is, that by running a red light, they keep the pollution circulating, lowering the chance of another CPGE bubble.
There you go Sara I hope that answers your question and thank you for writing in.

By the way, there is one more possible answer to your question. Maybe people are just dicks. you can mull over both these arguments but you decide which you believe.