The Michigan Left

The stuff of folk lore lives on in the state of Michigan. Dreaming of a magical world where people can turn left on red lights will inevitably lead you here. But I now know that this dream is derived from the fall of man, the corruption of spirit and flesh that leads to real physical and spiritual death. This very thing has also birthed all of the other traffic laws and road systems in this "magical" state. The law is thus: When stopped at a red traffic light, and said light begins to blink, one may turn left after yielding to oncoming traffic. This at first seems a novelty. Until one also learns that one may not turn left on normal highways. You have to find the special U-turn intersections to do U-turns because there are no left turns from side roads onto main roads. But you can't just pick any of them. Some of them are BAD places to turn, partly because you're not allowed, and partly because they are one-way Ueys, which again is why you're not allowed to Uey down the wrong way into an oncoming Uey. If you want to turn left, you turn right and drive down the street to the U-turn place, then pull a Uey, which may or may not have a traffic light to allow you into the 4 lanes of high-speed oncoming traffic. We were quite confused as to how the whole system worked when we arrived here. My travel partner, the driver, decided the only reasonable option, then, was to act as if all reds (blinking or not) were simply yield signs and when no cars were coming, it was perfectly acceptable to turn. This has actually worked pretty well for us. Most of those moments for illegal turns are pretty choice turning moments, so we've been taking advantage of all of them we can while we're here. In return, we leave our 10-cent pop bottle deposit in the state by not recycling our garbage. Sounds like a fair trade-off to me.