Bicycle Fixation Weblog
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04/08/2014: "Scofflaw Driver Diary Entry"
Yesterday's motor traffic imbecility quotient lay somewhere between amusing and dismaying, as I watched scofflaw drivers engage in the collective self-terrorism that characterizes road culture in Los Angeles. Among the Stupid Car Tricks I saw during two very short bike rides (to the farmers market and my yoga class, totaling about eight miles of exposure) were:- Three red light runners, sailing blithely through intersections at busy streets. One of them wasn't even preserving momentum, but gunned it from a dead stop, cellphone jammed in her elegant ear, well after the light had changed.
- Cars double parked on a narrow residential street that doubles as a collector, because it has traffic signals at the arterials it crosses. (This is Martel, for you locals, a street where I repeatedly catch up to those simpletons who drag-race from stop sign to stop sign, getting nowhere fast.)
- And, on quiet little Fourth Street, a moron encased in an expensive SUV again drag racing from stop sign to stop sign, though intersections are barely a hundred yards apart on Fourth—then blasting the horn at a couple of sedans that were slow crossing Highland, where traffic was jammed because the police were clearing up a three-car crash.
- Said three-car crash, which, as near as I could judge from a glance as I passed, probably happened when yet another drooling fool tried to pass on the right and hit a parked car. Highland sees routine speeding, often over sixty miles per hour.
