Boulder Uber Driver

I have been a Boulder Uber driver on Friday and Saturday evenings for over 8 years. NONE of the stories I have read about the planned outage mention how dangerous the roads were to drive on Saturday April 6th. I usually Uber from 4pm to 4am. Coming in from Longmont (where I live) I had no idea any power was out (I of course received no previous notice) until I came to the first signal and saw it not working (NOT blinking RED or yellow) but TOTALLY DARK. No problem, I just stopped like a 4-way stop. However, later in the evening when it was totally dark, many, many MANY cars just flew throught the "OUT" signal intersections without stopping or even slowing down. Also there were many more than "a few signals out on Arapahoe". Let me list them: On Canyon alone were 17th, 15th, and Broadway. On Arapahoe the lights out were: 19th, 17th, 15th, and Broadway. On Broadway the lights out were: Arapahoe, Canyon, Pearl, Spruce, and Pine. Also out was Valmont and 36. That's at least (I didn't drive in North Boulder that night so I can't say about there) TEN intersections with no signal AT ALL-completely dark. I saw 2 accidents (Broadway & Canyon and Valmont & 36) and they weren't minor fender benders either-police, fire trucks, and ambulances called. But the worst part was that at the totally dark area intersections such as Arapahoe and 19th, I saw more cars just driving through than I saw cars stopping! I believe that was because the drivers just couldn't even see the signal lights hanging up there (and not because they are real poor drivers). Although I did see some real poor drivers also. I stopped at Canyon and Broadway and then slowly entered the intersection as I watched a pickup truck approach from the west. He didn't slow down, he wasn't slowing down......so I stopped, and sure enought he drove east right through the intersection without stopping. Yes, I gave he a good long honk of my horn. He had no clue.

I sympathize with turning off the power to prevent fires in extremely windy conditions like we had April 6th. But I would suggest putting some sort of battery powered blinking red light on the signal lights of every intersection affected. I don't know how many total accidents happened that night at dark intersections, but there could be law suits coming from this also. This is WAY more important than lost food costs.

P.S. And don't think the CU students weren't out and about that night- the Sundowner bar on Pearl was open for business with a generator so don't pretend nobody was on the streets.