MovieChat Forums > The Blues Brothers (1980) Discussion > Red Light Vs. Yellow Light

Red Light Vs. Yellow Light

posted 8 years ago by DarthBill
2 replies | jump to latest

You know you're thinking about it *way* too hard when you start contemplating the many possibilities of whether or not Elwood really ran a red light.

The State Troopers pull him over & accuse him of running a red light; Elwood protests that the light was yellow. Possibly...

1) He really did run the red light.

2) The light may not have changed from yellow to red until Elwood was already out in the intersection, by which point he couldn't have stopped anyway.

3) The light did not change from yellow to red until Elwood was already passing under it, causing it to appear as though he had run the red light.

4) The real reason the State Troopers pulled Elwood over was because they saw that he was driving a decommissioned police vehicle and thought something was wrong & just used the light issue as an excuse to pull him over.

Did I miss any? ;)

[–] zorrorosso 8 years ago

Guess they all plausible reasons...

I suck at driving and the first years I watched the movie with no driving licence, I thought the cops pulled Elwood over on a small technicality, but later on this was one of the main questions we asked at driving school:

-on a yellow light, the driver should slow down and stop, not speed up, to avoid the risk of runnig on a red light without seeing it.

I guess that the cops had a slow evening for that day and they kinda noticed him not slowing down and so passing the red light, for Elwood was still yellow, but for the cops behind him was already red.

I don't know if it was shot like this on purpose, but the intersection looks like there's indeed no other car, that would make any driver speed up on a yellow light just to avoid the wait.

What makes me grin the most is that for pulling him over, the cops had to put the emergency sirens and cross on a full red light (already green on the other side), causing high risk for accidents and stop abruptly the traffic by the other side.

[–] Foster (878) a year ago

RED, means STOP

GREEN, means GO

YELLOW, means GO FASTER