“Here is another video I took yesterday (5/9/10) afternoon around 5:30 p.m. I had walked to Whole Foods on Santa Monica & Fairfax and was walking back with 2 full cloth bags of groceries.  I waited at the southeast corner of Fairfax and Fountain for a fresh green light.  This woman driver making a right turn kept inching out, but the steady stream of traffic prevented her from making the right turn until the light changed.  She saw me, our eyes met, and she still accelerated out as I stepped off the curb.  I had my phone recording.  A dangerous game of chicken, but I am so fed up with the total lack of regard for pedestrians that I will fight at every intersection (not to mention that I had run 16 miles earlier in the day, dodging traffic most of the way and had to dodge motorists from side streets that drive all the way out into Fountain before stopping, and I was pissed off).  This happens all the time!

Every time you read about a traffic collision between a pedestrian or bicyclist and a motorist, it is just a “tragic accident” as long as there is no alcohol or drugs involved and the driver sticks around. The driver is not charged.  I contend that this makes peds and bikers fair game for motorists.  There is no [added] penalty for hitting them, and who’s to say if they were in the intersection legally (especially when they are dead).   The message is if the ped or bicyclist makes a mistake, jaywalks, swerves into traffic, it is the death penalty for them.

If there is to be any concept of “sharing the road,” then motorists have to be on the lookout for children in the street, people running to catch a bus, old people who can’t make it across the street before the light changes, bicyclists who have to swerve out to avoid debris on the shoulder, etc.   The law for motorists is supposed to be that you do everything in your power to avoid an accident.   But the police don’t seem to enforce this when it comes to pedestrians and bicyclists. There are a lot more peds and bikers on the road now than there used to be and we are seeing a lot more of these collisions.  I think we need ask ourselves just how brutal and barbaric do we want our society to be?”

Someone should refresh this driver on right-of-way laws regarding crosswalks and pedestrians.  It is true that we are getting more and more pedestrians on our streets, but Angelenos are still notorious for not paying attention to anything smaller than a Smart car.  So I feel it’s important to reemphasize that pedestrians should always strive to make eye contact with a driver before crossing in front of the driver’s vehicle.

“Saw the Dec. 10 entry and thought I would send you this video. This shows the nightly struggle at the intersection of Fairfax and Santa Monica Blvd.  I was traveling north on Fairfax.   I have seen a number of collisions due to this behavior when the driver in the middle lane doesn’t let the scofflaw cut in.  Of course, pedestrians are knocked to the side in the quest to be first off the mark.”

Those of us who live here know that this selfish crap happens all the frackin’ time in Los Angeles.  Here we have just one driver who is blocking an entire right turn only lane in an attempt to use it as a passing lane during rush hour and forcing another row of drivers to brake by illegally cutting into the through lane.  Was the person signaling?  Yes, but signaling isn’t Confession, people.  You can’t just obstruct traffic, ignore lane markings, illegally pass, etc. and say a few figurative Hail Marys by signaling and think everything is just peachy.  Given that one driver can cause this much micro-congestion gives me the impression that the study quoted in that article was flawed.  Add the inevitable game of chicken that aggressive drivers love to play and road raging vindictiveness into the equation, and you have what we like to call Sig Alert Mania.

“This morning (10/16/09)  I was in the left turn lane on Fairfax at the intersection of San Vicente Blvd. A big truck, the Bluebird truck you see in the picture, was in front of me.  A couple of cars were ahead of the truck.  This intersection is always bad.  Traffic eastward on San Vicente sits in the intersection when the light turns red.  The light at Olympic is not synchronized properly.

Anyway, by the time the big truck got into the intersection, the arrow was red so I stayed behind.  Apparently that was just too much for the driver of the big SUV behind me.  He accelerated around me on the left in the oncoming lane and made the turn against traffic. As you can see, he beat out the big truck.  A good thing I waited, ’cause I think he would have hit me in his haste to turn.

I want a huge SUV so I can just ignore all the traffic rules, too.”

I used to live right around this area and know this poorly designed intersection all too well.  You know things are bad in this town when you start seeing aggressive, selfish jackasses run red lights and drive against traffic just to get where they’re going.  With that said, here’s the other anecdote, also involving a an asshole in an SUV.

“Unfortunately, I don’t have a photo because I didn’t have my camera-phone on me on a seemingly short pleasant trip to Bed Bath & Beyond on Ventura Blvd. in Studio City.  I pulled out of the parking lot driveway and made a right onto the right lane of a completely car-free Ventura Blvd. and was going about 40 mph when I started approaching a slow-moving truck in the left lane next to me.  As I drove, I noticed a black Lexus SUV in my rear-view creeping close and closer, until he was pretty much glued to my bumper.  I was kind of annoyed, but just kept my initial speed (not purposely trying to piss him off or anything; if I wanted to do that, I would have stepped on the brakes), and as we passed the truck the Lexus changed lanes to my left, floored it, and as he passed me, we looked at each other with the same “what the hell are you doing, douchebag” expression on our faces and he honked at me!  In his distraction, while he turned to look at me and honk, he nearly hit my car.  I slowed down as half of his car started to drift into my lane.  He adjusted himself back into the left lane, but still wanted to let me know that he owned Ventura Blvd., so he went back into the right lane, in front of me, as we approached Coldwater Canyon, and then had to merge back into the left when he realized that people were making a right onto Coldwater in front of him.  Like, this guy has a really nice car, definitely nicer than mine, and was obviously confused as to why I didn’t speed and do what he wanted me to do, unlike every soul he’s crushed on his way to buying his Lexus.  The fact that he saw fit to honk at me and then muscle in front of me lets me know how unreasonable I was by having the audacity to not let the owner of the road drive like the idiot he is.

To top the morning off, as I was stopped at a four-way stop sign on my residential street, this red BMW driving up to the sign to my right approached, seemed like he was slowing a bit, but gunned it anyway, completely NOT stopping and making me hit the brakes in the intersection.  I honked and this old man turned his head to look at me for a second, completely expressionless.  I’m sure he didn’t even realize he had a stop sign.  Sigh.

I live in the valley and things like this happen everyday.  Every. Day.”

I live in the Valley now and can also vouch for this.  Hell, just the other day, an old clueless lady (in a dark green Honda or Toyota, can’t remember) just rolled right through a stop sign without even touching her brake.  She was coming from my right and could’ve hit any car moving forward that had just stopped for the 4-way stop sign intersection on the road perpendicular to her.  Thankfully, she missed me, though I did honk at her in protest–and like the driver of this BMW, I simply saw a clueless, vacant stare.

“You need need all three of these pictures to set the scene here.  I was walking north on Fairfax towards 3rd. St. with a bunch of other people.  There are always a lot of pedestrians at 3rd & Fairfax.  This was approximately 6 p.m. on Wednesday, August 19, 2009.

The light turned green with a walk sign for us.  The Chevy (Exhibit A foreground) was already late making a left, as the green and yellow arrows were long gone.  You can see the Kia Sedona minivan sitting behind the crosswalk facing south on Fairfax and pedestrians starting to cross.   Next, the minivan continues on to make the left turn, having to go on the wrong side of the center divider to avoid me and a bunch of other pedestrians, not to mention oncoming traffic.  The driver was a woman, a real porker, probably had to be forklifted into the minivan to drive and probably never walks anywhere. She just forced her vehicle through the crowd.  Some of the pedestrians actually applauded my picture-taking.”

I would applaud as well.  Talk about clearcut proof.  So if you see a porker driving a Kia Sedona, license plate 6GZ****, watch out that you don’t get run over.  On second thought, keep a watch even after she leaves her vehicle.  Chances are she pounds the pavement and shopping center crowds the same way she drives.

“Life’s a bitch when you’ve got your hands full with cigarettes and cell phones and you have to turn your big-ass SUV into a crowd of pedestrians.  This was taken yesterday at Fairfax and Beverly.  I was stopped.  She was trying to turn right.  Every second driver I see has a phone to his/her ear, but this idiot took the cake.  She was struggling to decide what to do next while trying to get a grip on the steering wheel without dropping the cigarette or phone.

Last week, a bus driver on the #2 bus on Sunset at Whittier was eating something out of a bowl as he crossed Whittier.  Both hands off the wheel, bus about half full of passengers. I was about to run across Sunset.  Some days I think I should just stay in bed, but the cars and trucks run right into the houses anyway.”

That last sentence reminded me of a post sometime last year of a car that ran into a house on Highland.  As I was heading over to the pediatrician this morning, I can’t tell you how many drivers I saw texting and checking email or browsing the web while driving.  If you ever wonder why you’re stuck behind a driver that won’t accelerate when a traffic light turns green and cars have already moved in front of him, chances are that person is fracking around with his cell phone.

These two anecdotes were submitted today without photos, but they are certainly worth sharing:

“Both of these incidents involve heavy, stopped traffic and total psychopathic idiots who speed in the curb lane.

The first was on Sunset in Hollywood.  I was going West at about 5:30 p.m.  Traffic eastbound was bumper to bumper and stopped, except for a couple of blocks in the curb lane.  I saw a
driver attempting a left turn at an intersection without a traffic light, and the 2 lanes of cars had left a space to let him pass.  All of a sudden, I see a car speeding down the curb lane like it had just found a new way to get around all these stopped losers.  Before I could blink, there was a huge crash, and the left-turning car had spun completely around and was on the sidewalk, where it took out the newspaper vending machines.  Luckily, for once, no pedestrians were hit.

Second incident.  Also around 5:30 p.m. I was driving north on Fairfax, and traffic again was bumper to bumper.   The drivers in the #1 lane and myself in the #2 lane were stopped before the intersection at Romaine to keep the intersection clear; there is no light at Romaine and Fairfax.  Right about the time I stopped, I saw 2 pedestrians starting to cross in the crosswalk.  A large silver Lexus SUV approached to my right in the curb lane [which has parked cars except for posted hours during rush hour] and didn’t think to slow down or stop because he could see a block of open pavement ahead.  The pedestrians were already about 4 steps out in the lane, and the SUV had to swerve over toward me to avoid hitting them.  It was very close.  As he continued on toward Santa Monica Blvd., I tried to get a picture, but he managed to turn right before I could recover from the shock.

I can’t understand why drivers do this.   When you see a very congested area with almost all the traffic stopped, shouldn’t that be a sign to you that it might be wise to at least slow down?  This was the same day that we had the pedestrian trifecta–one hit by a bus in Venice, a couple hit at a bus stop by a car out of control, and a cyclist who was killed in Reseda (just the ones we knew about).”

Let’s put aside aggressive driving and reckless passing/speeding on the right for a second.  L.A. drivers on average are woefully deficient when it comes to observation skills.  As crowded as we are in certain parts of the county, we are truly isolated individuals living in the bubble of our car, home, and place of work or schooling.  It’s so easy to forget that others exist outside our hamster balls, and too many drivers lose the vigilance you’re supposed to have when you’re behind the wheel.  We also fail to treat our fellow commuters as fellow human beings; rather, we treat them as obstacles in our daily agendas that ought to be categorically removed from our paths.  Although NYC certainly has its share of aggressive, road-raging drivers, I stand firm with my belief that NY’ers are better drivers than Angelenos.  If you stop looking around you for a split second in NY, you’re bound to hit a cab that just cut you off, a pedestrian jaywalking across the street, a cyclist delivering weed to his customers on the Upperwest Side, etc.  Take yourself out of the car for a moment: When you’re forced to deal with strangers invading your private space, you innately become aware of the innumerable random social interactions going on around you.  In Los Angeles, we don’t have the luxury of this sort of practice because of the way this city has evolved.  As a result, you have a town full of aggressive assnuts who are half-aware of what’s going around them.  Aggressive, not too bright, and oblivious…hmm, not a very good combination.