Anyone who lives in a city with traffic lights knows these simple rules: Green means “go,” red means “stop” and yellow means “caution.”

However, in Durant, “green” often means “don’t miss this opportunity to go,” red means “stop for what seems like an eternity” and yellow means “cross as fast as you can.”

These definitions particularly come into play during the early morning, lunch and supper time rushes, when the majority of people are off to work or are making a beeline for restaurants.

The main purpose of traffic lights is to make roads safer to travel and prevent collisions, but these goals are hindered when people become frustrated at the wait time at intersections. This could cause some people to actually run red lights due to impatience.

Remember the old adage “Patience is a virtue”? Well, that usually goes out the window when red lights stay on forever and green lights stay green only long enough for two or three cars to cross.

Just the other day, I waited for at least five minutes at the traffic light on Ninth Avenue and Main Street. FIVE minutes, folks. In that matter of time, vehicles can stack up so far that other intersections could become blocked.

And in many other instances this week, I have had to wait even longer at traffic lights. I made the mistake of taking University Boulevard one day during the lunch rush. The street used to have four-way stops, but those were later replaced with traffic lights at practically every intersection.

While I was waiting on the bridge near the back of the trail of vehicles, the light turned green, but nobody moved. Shortly after, the light turned red again for a long while. When it turned green again, the line didn’t budge immediately.

After I had just about convinced myself to turn off and take a side road, the line finally moved and I was fortunate enough to cross. Of course, I turned off at the next intersection after waiting another long period of time for the light to turn green again.

The traffic on University had backed up so far that, even with a green light, vehicles at some intersections were unable to move.

Traffic lights typically operate two different ways: sensors or timers. I’m not sure how traffic lights in Durant operate, but, whatever it is, it isn’t working.

If they operate on timers, those need to be adjusted where the waiting period at lights isn’t ridiculous. If they use sensors, perhaps these could be fixed in some way — as long as it is cost feasible, of course.

Either way, people should never have enough time at a traffic light to jump out of their vehicles and clean their windshields, if they so desire. Right now, they often have enough time to do that and then some.

Let’s stop playing the waiting game and start taking action to fix this all-too-common problem.