It's been a long day, and all you want to do is get back to your nice air-conditioned home. But the sign above the stoplight is rather explicit: "No Turn on Red." So rather than wait, you do what comes naturally: cut through the gas station on the corner.
As of this month, cutting corners like that is illegal in Virginia; police officers can issue $25 tickets to anybody they catch trying it.
Gas station managers and other business owners complained enough to get the Virginia General Assembly to pass a law outlawing the practice. Neither the District nor Maryland has such a law.
It may not seem like the biggest legislation to emerge from Richmond, but it is the kind of little-noticed statute that has an impact on real life.
"It's one of those things that kind of affect people in their daily routines," said Sen. Mark L. Earley (R-Chesapeake), who sponsored the legislation. "You can see how it would create a traffic safety problem with people who cut through the parking lots. They tend to go a little faster than people who just pull in to park."
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Surinder Chase could testify to that. As manager of an Exxon gas station at the southern edge of Old Town Alexandria, he watches in frustration as cars zoom through his lot at all hours.
"I hate it," said Chase, who has worked 15 years at the station at Franklin and South Patrick streets. "You can't fight them. They're just shooting through here.
"One day," he predicted ominously, "there'll be an accident and there'll be a big explosion."
Major accidents like that may be rare, but police and business owners blame the cut-through traffic for fender benders, though no one calls it a major issue.
It should be no surprise that drivers will go to extraordinary lengths to shave even a few seconds off their commutes in an area where people spend so much time on the road.
"It really points out the frustration that people feel with the congested roads," said John Undeland, a spokesman for the local chapter of the American Automobile Association.
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The new law, which prohibits drivers from going "onto or across any public or private property in order to evade any stop sign, yield sign, traffic light, or other traffic control device," sailed through the General Assembly last winter without drawing much attention. Even some lawmakers with vested interests didn't realize what they had done.
"I just heard about that the other day," said Sen. Richard L. Saslaw (D-Springfield). "I mean, I own {two} service stations and I didn't even know we passed it."
Unlike the complainers, he said, "I like people cutting through my gas station because sometimes they like something they see and they stop."
Police officials welcomed the new law as an additional tool for officers but acknowledged that enforcement will be a problem.
"It's not always easy to prove," said Alexandria police Officer Mark Bergin. "I pull you over and you say, 'I was going to get gas, but heck, I saw how much they were charging, and I decided to go to the gas station near my home.' "
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That reality kept Ken Strouth from getting too excited about the new law. He manages the Main Street Shell station in Fairfax City, where drivers heading north on East Street routinely cut through. "It's not going to change anything," he said. "They're going to go through just like they did before."
As if to prove the point, at that very moment a dark blue minivan cruised through the lot without stopping. "See that?" Strouth said. Efforts to get cutting-through drivers to stop for interviews on their motives and reactions to the law were unsuccessful. They were, after all, in a hurry.
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