The Yabbuts

There's a stop sign near my house on Tower Road at the corner with Carrothers Road south-east of Austin. It hasn't always been there. For many years it was an uncontrolled rural intersection like hundreds of others. There are rules of the road governing uncontrolled intersections. If it's been a while since you did driver training and you don't drive in rural areas very much it works like this: When two vehicles on different roads approach an uncontrolled intersection, the vehicle on the right has right-of-way and should go first while the other vehicle stops for it. It's a good simple system that works well… until people get the ‘yabbuts.’

The yabbuts is what happens when there's something you're clearly supposed to do but you say, “Yeah, but... “ and make up an excuse why the procedure that applies to others doesn't apply to you. In this case, people who can't or don't want to drive on the highway sometimes treat Tower Road as a mini-highway between Austin and MacGregor and if it turns out they cut somebody off at an intersection they might say, “Yeah but the powerline road is bigger and I'm in a hurry” or something like that. So, after a number of traffic accidents in which people did not yield to the vehicle on their right and then went cruising through the backside of Austin at highway speed, the municipality put a stop sign on Tower Road. Unfortunately, stop signs are also subject to the yabbuts and people still blow through that intersection if it appears that nobody's coming, or they believe hauling a load of yard junk to the dump is an emergency service that takes precedence over other traffic rules, or they're on their phone, or whatever other reason you can think of.

The other day I was going west on Tower Road toward that intersection and I saw a vehicle belonging to a business from Portage la Prarie coming along Carrothers from the north. I slowed for the stop sign and they slowed too. I stopped at the stop sign and they stopped too even though they had right of way by either the old system or the stop sign system. There we were, both at a full stop. I thought maybe the driver wanted to ask for directions or maybe he had mistaken me for somebody he knew, but when he saw that I was both stopped and looking at him he waved and continued through the intersection. It was a nice day, we both had our windows open, and as he drove away he grinned and called out, “You never know around here.”

It's embarrassing to me that in my community defensive driving includes stopping when the driver on the other road has a stop sign since it's quite likely that they won't pay attention to it. MacGregor folks don't get to feel too smug since the same thing happens at the corner of Tower Road and Rosehill Road by the spruce trees. In both cases, there are clear rules for unmarked intersections that got ignored when people thought up excuses that began, “Yeah, but ... “ and then an even clearer stop sign that still gets ignored when people keep on thinking up excuses based on the assumption that what they are doing is the way it should be and although they might know what the procedure is they're quick to say, “yeah, but ... “ and excuse their own actions.

Sometimes the yabbuts are legitimate. The speed limit on the Trans Canada Highway is 110 km/h in most places but if you're driving an ambulance with lights and siren on with a person in medical distress in the back on the way to hospital, you really are an exception to the rule and you can legally drive faster than the speed limit that applies to almost everybody else. And there's also some latitude for the spirit of the law. Many drivers, even very careful ones, occasionally use a rolling stop when there's no other traffic or people around. Strictly speaking, it's not what you're supposed to do but it honours the spirit of the stop sign and it's better than blowing through at 110 with both thumbs busy on your phone in the middle of the steering wheel. If the worst that could be said of local drivers is that we occasionally use a rolling stop, the delivery driver I met would not have felt the need to drive as defensively as he did. That level of compensating for others seems necessary when the local custom has turned into open derision of good practice as a result of too much yabbut.

Any situation that involves negotiating a lot of relationships at once is subject to the yabbuts. Situations in which there are expectations, traditions, or rules that don't always seem to apply are also likely to produce the yabbuts. Between those things, we can expect to see a lot of the yabbuts in church and we should not be surprised. We hear ourselves or others say, “Yeah, but ... “ and then go on to explain why a former expectation either no longer applies at all or doesn't apply in this situation. Mennonite churches got started back in the day by saying, “Yeah, but ... “ to first the Catholics and then the Lutherans and then going off on their own and we've had a regular case of the yabbuts ever since. More recently the North American evangelical and non-denominational church have been influenced by libertarian politics and an individualistic model of salvation and has learned to say, “Yeah, but ... “ to anything that seems like overbearing tradition or expectation from others. Those of us who worship in churches that combine that Anabaptist history with nondenominational evangelical practice get a double dose of the yabbuts. To be fair, a lot of good discernment and figuring out how things could work better can come from a process that begins when somebody says, “Yeah, but ...” and digs into whether the established pattern still fits or ever did. Finally, I will confess that I get more than my fair share of the yabbuts. I'm hardly a model of restraint in that department.

Just as with traffic rules, there are exceptions. But, as with traffic, exceptions get to be a problem when we make so many of them that the procedures meant to help things run smoothly no longer work. In those cases, everyone has to stop at every relational intersection to figure out the next steps from scratch. It becomes difficult to get anywhere at all since everyone believes themselves to be exceptional.

Oh, the possible applications! Our community is prone to the yabbuts in more areas than just traffic. I easily get the yabbuts personally. Our church, along with several others in the area, get the yabbuts from two different directions at once. Our individualistic culture is susceptible to the yabbuts in general. It gets hard to pick one area to focus on. Perhaps it's best to leave you, and me, with a reminder that when we feel the need to enter a conversation by saying, “Yeah, but ... “ it's worth a pause to consider whether we are blowing through stop signs without consideration for those around us or if we have a substantial and exceptional reason for the yabbut.