Looking Beyond the Obvious Warnings

In Utah, when drivers approach an intersection with inoperable traffic control lights, they must stop and yield to prior traffic before entering the intersection. This morning, we had an intersection with dead traffic control lights along a state highway. I watched many cars just fly through the intersection and several near-miss collisions, to the point that I parked my police truck in the center of the intersection with emergency lights on to make people pay better attention.

When the traffic control lights are working, I don’t see nearly the same number of people running red lights, so that makes me wonder if people are only looking for a red light and not paying attention to the green. Anyone who has spent any amount of time driving a car knows what the traffic control colors and the position of those colors mean. Those lights provide several clues to indicate if it is safe to proceed.

There has been some good discussion about paying attention and reading clues to get more information that can lead to avoiding a confrontation and ultimately avoiding the need for deadly force. Darryl Bolke, Cecil Burch , Craig Douglas , Chuck Haggard , and several other notable figures talk about various body language queues that help you recognize preattack indicators.

If we only look for the obvious “red lights” of an attack, we are missing clues that provide opportunities to avoid, create distance, formulate a plan, etc. Many people only consider training to be firearms-related—there are far more applicable topics to daily life than just a pistol class.

For people looking for more information on this topic – look up the names provided above and look up MUC – Managing Unknown Contacts.