Extracting Ourselves from a Traffic Jam

Every once in a while, when I take Tony to school, the traffic lights at two major intersections near Tony's school stop working.  At the intersections, there are three lanes going left, right and straight.  The local drivers, being selfish and not knowing how to act in uncontrolled intersections, cause traffic trying to get through to grind to halt.  The only ones who can get through are perhaps the ones making right turns.

This latest morning of having to deal with this was particularly annoying for me because I had to be at work early.  So in a fit of impatience, I impulsively thought that I could finesse my way through the first intersection, but I quickly regretted it because a truck making a right turn from my right hand side was trapped and blocking my way.  However, I was lucky because I could back out and do what I should have done in the first place: which was make a right turn and try my luck at the other intersection.  

But heading toward it, I saw the lights were out there as well.  There, I thought first to make a left turn, thinking again I could finesse my way through, but again there was a truck trying to get through the intersection that was trapped by cars trying to go in three other directions.  Anyway, it was a situation that a few policeman would be needed to fix, and there were none in sight.  So, my only choice was to make Tony get out of the car and have him walk a block to his school.  He readily agreed to do this and I was, after making a four point back-up and turn-around that confused the drivers surrounding me, able to make a right turn in a direction toward a road with no traffic and get myself home and then to work on time.