You Had One Job, Amarillo. What Is This With This Crazy Traffic Light?

In Amarillo, Texas, we recently had to deal with a lot of work being done on the traffic lights in various areas around town. Once the work was done, we realized that many of the intersections had new left turn lights. These lights saw the addition of flashing yield lights in the left turn lane. It also brought us this one wonky red light on 34th.

Why Is There A Crooked Red Light In Amarillo, Texas?

If you've been at the intersection of 34th and Bell heading north and got stuck at a red light, you've had to notice the wonky left turn light. The yellow and green lights are just fine and point directly to the left like you expect them to. The red one, however, threw me for a loop.

I hit Google with a few questions to see if this was a new trend. I wanted to know if there was possibly some obscure traffic rule I wasn't aware of. Maybe, if the arrow points to a specific spot on the road, you can only go that far. Perhaps the arrow is trying to point directly at the lane I should be turning into.

Google seemed to be just as confused as I was. I did look up pictures of red left turn signals just to make sure I hadn't pulled a Mandela Effect and dreamed up perfectly horizontal red arrows.

You Had One Job: Amarillo Edition

We've had a lot of "you had one job" moments in Amarillo. They're everywhere if you just stop to look. I don't know that I've seen one that has so completely caught me by surprise. I took those perfectly horizontal arrows for granted. Now that we have one pointing to 8 o'clock, I have a new appreciation for those perfect lights.

Hanging these lights to be perfectly horizontal apparently isn't as easy as you might think it would be. It turns out that there's room for error, and the job might require a bit of finesse.

It could be worse. It could be pointing straight up, which would be a very obvious statement for the light to make. Of course, you can't go straight in a left-turn-only lane. It's also better than being a red light pointing straight down. You don't want people thinking that one of Amarillo's 7 Gates Of Hell is located at the intersection of 34th and Bell between a Toot'n Totum and a Little Caesar's.

Please, don't think I want this fixed or that I'm pointing out a problem that needs to be addressed. Leave it. If for no other reason than we probably don't want to deal with crews being back at the intersection during our commute.

You had one job...