Saint John — Do you remember those kids who used to like being Simon in “Simon Says” a little too much? A Saint John woman was one of those kids, and now she has upped her game to a whole new level.
Judy Camyon is disregarding the “right of way” rules of driving in favour of an “I am the law!” approach. She has taken to patrolling the busiest roads of southwestern New Brunswick to determine who gets to pull out into traffic during daily rush hours.
“I was driving along Rothesay Avenue in Saint John, and I saw this little old man trying to make a left turn onto that busy street at the worst possible time of day,” recounted Camyon. “I just felt sorry for him and I decided to stop my big SUV to let him out. Since there are four lanes of traffic, once he began to pull out it sort of forced everyone to stop and let him go.
“All of a sudden, I got this huge rush and I got kind of light-headed and excited all at once,” she confided. “I was the one in charge of deciding who got to go and who had to wait!
“I realized that I could mete out justice on the busy roads using my big vehicle to let ill-advised people pull out whenever I saw fit. I decided right then and there I was going to chase that feeling to the max!”
Ryan Freiner got a firsthand taste of Camyon’s street justice earlier today on Hampton Road in Rothesay. “I was driving along doing about 55 kilometres per hour, when this SUV in front of me suddenly came to a dead-stop out of nowhere! I stood on my brakes to stop, wondering what had jumped out in front of her. But, then I realized that she stopped to let some random person pull out.
“It was impossible to tell what she was doing — I almost rear-ended her!” he complained. “What a moron!”
Camyon was not fazed at all by the criticism. “Remember that movie Captain Phillips? Well, ‘Look at me! Look at me! I’m the stop light now!'” she laughed.