There was one thing my father always used to do that I thought was overly cautious.

He would wait at an intersection at times when I thought he should have gone, and when I asked him why he waited when he could easily have gone, he had a simple response.

<em>"It isn't whether there's time to make it or not, it's what happens if something goes wrong."</em>

I thought about that yesterday when I went to the grocery store. I was coming up to the light at Martin Luther King Highway, which is called Expressway a little to the south in Griffin and Tara Boulevard 10 miles or so to the north heading into Atlanta. I usually have to sit at a red light there, but as I approached the intersection, the light was green. It hadn't just turned green, either.

[caption id="attachment_706" align="alignleft" width="200" caption="Yes, it means &quot;stop,&quot; but ..."]<a href="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/9540.jpg"><img class="size-full wp-image-706" title="9540" src="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/9540.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="260" /></a>[/caption]

If I had been two seconds farther along the road, I would have had big trouble. As I neared the intersection, a driver in a pickup truck heading north toward Atlanta blasted through the intersection at about 60 miles an hour -- through a red light. I'm not sure why he did it; he probably wasn't concentrating and didn't realize the light was red.

Fortunately, no one was crossing his path at the time.

It's funny.

My dad died nearly three years ago, but he's still getting smarter every year.