Storms, Civilization, and Uncivilized behavior

St. Louis made the national news over the weekend, after a surprise storm front roared through the area Wednesday night and knocked out power to hundreds of thousands of people.
This was a very fast-developing storm, not called for in the forecasts. Swept through in the early evening, with winds recorded at 85 mph.
Our son was at the ball park at the time; things got pretty interesting!

We were extremely lucky, loosing power for only about an hour in the early morning, evidently knocked out when they were cutting other parts of the grid back on.
Huge numbers of trees and big branches were downed, taking down power lines and causing all manner of problems. At present the university I work at is putting up some 300 out-of-state electrical workers who have been brought in to handle the emergency.

Having no power makes one well aware of the fragility of civilization, and how much we depend on having electricity available. Generators and ice are still in heavy demand, as folks try to get some sort of power, and preserve food. Makes you wonder how all those Iraqis who get electricity for a few hours a day make do, eh?

But about that uncivilized behavior... It's supposed to be common knowledge that when you encounter an electric signal that's not working, you treat it like a stop sign. Driving 101, huh?
But I was absolutely amazed at the numbers of people I saw just merrily driving through these darkened intersections. Naturally, dozens of accidents have been reported, prompting all the local media to appeal to drivers to treat these intersections as 4-way stops.
I had commuters merrily blowing the signal at the main crosswalk to main campus from our dorm area, and was convinced someone was going to get killed.
I spent several hours sitting there in the police car, with the red lights on. That helped a little, but still many drivers just zipped on through without a glance at my car. Absolutely amazing.
I was making calls to every agency I could think of that might have temporary stop signs, and finally the County responded with some.
About that time, an accident was reported on the other side of campus. One of our maintenance trucks had pulled out onto the main drag there, and was centerpunched by an oncoming SUV that ignored the blackened signal.
I arrived on the scene first, and asked the lady driver if she was injured. She said no. I then asked her why she didn't stop. She said, "the light was green!" I directed her to look at the darkened signal. "Lady, they weren't working." She had nothing further to say. I suspect that she wanted very badly for the light to have been green...