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Video: Taxi Driver Hits Over 100 Consecutive Green Lights In Manhattan
By
Ben Yakas
Published Mar 29, 2014
Modified Mar 31, 2014
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By
Ben Yakas
Published Mar 29, 2014
Modified Mar 31, 2014
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At the start of the month, we wrote about driver Tim Burke and his video in which he hit 55 consecutive green lights in a row. After seeing Burke's video, taxi driver Noah Forman was unimpressed, and decided to best it: "Seeing this as an easy goal to beat, about a week later or so I taped this run," he told us. Watch below as he hits well over 100 green lights without any red in sight.
Forman gets about 89 green lights driving down 5th Avenue to Waverly Place, then stops around 2:09 to pick up a passenger (he is on the clock, after all), all without hitting and red lights. He continues on with about 56 straight green lights up 6th Avenue into the 70s, when he finally hits a stop light around 3:45. He gets 76 more greens in a row traveling up Madison Avenue to finish the video though.
Cabbies clearly have some advantages in this area: back in 2011, fellow taxi driver Max Cohen drove up the entire length of 1st Avenue from 1st to 125th Street hitting all the green lights. You can see his video below.
Note: the green wave (light switching is staggered by 10 seconds so that cars going at 30 mph—the current speed limit—can easily navigate traffic) is clearly a great thing and facilitates smooth movement around the city, but this is not an endorsement of speeding or reckless driving. Nobody should challenge themselves to speed around the city—but as Sonic Youth once put it, feel free to kneel before the green light.
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green lights
manhattan
noah forman
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taxi driver
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Ben Yakas
Ben Yakas is a former Gothamist reporter.
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