THE vicar saw red – but all too late.

And it was not his fault, he suggested, after being summoned for ignoring a traffic signal in the centre of Southampton.

The Rev. Herbert Rivington complained the traffic lights at the junction of Above Bar and Pound Tree Road were too low and obscured by parked vehicles.

That, he maintained, was why he'd failed to see a car emerging from a side road.

“I would like to suggest that the authorities concerned should see if these lights cannot be fixed 10 feet higher so to be visible by approaching cars over the tops of cars drawn up along the kerb in front of them.”

The vicar said he would not have ventured to make such a suggestion but for his experience in driving in such diverse places as Cairo, Alexandria, New York, Los Angeles, many town ins Italy, France and Switzerland and occasionally in London.

He said it was only the second time he had encountered traffic lights, the other being in Alexandria, where they were as effective as a night light hiding behind a glass of port!

“I realised that I must have passed it several times without being aware of its existence during the previous weeks.”

The vicar, who pleaded guilty by letter, was fined £1 when his case was heard by magistrates in 1935.