Shots From Cars : Traffic Rage Drives Some to Violence

It looked like a movie: The driver leaning out his car window, firing a gun at five youths during an argument over right-of-way in the heavy Saturday night traffic that clogs Hollywood Boulevard.

But the 9-millimeter semiautomatic was real, and when the shooting stopped Nov. 15, 17-year-old Andrew Martinez was dying and 19-year-old Samuel Solis was wounded in the leg.

‘One witness said they all thought it was a joke. It just didn’t seem legitimate that someone would open fire in the middle of the street,” Police Lt. Ed Hocking said.

The motive, he concluded last week as the gunman remained at large, was “strictly . . . traffic tempers.”

Like others in Southern California law enforcement agencies, the veteran homicide investigator says violence stemming from minor driving mishaps is infrequent, despite a spate of such crimes in this motor mecca in recent months. But awareness is growing of breakdowns in driver behavior, ranging from simple discourtesy to murder, and officials warn motorists to avoid confrontations, particularly on clogged city streets.

‘Catastrophic Flood’

Police Chief Daryl F. Gates recently unleashed a blast at traffic managers, sending a letter to Mayor Tom Bradley in which he compared traffic congestion to a “catastrophic flood” and told reporters the situation was creating “an undisciplined group of drivers and pedestrians.”

In February, two bullets hit a Rapid Transit District bus 10 blocks past an intersection where the bus had swerved to avoid a car. The case was never solved, but police said the near-collision seemed the motive.

Los Angeles Police Detective Rick Jackson is still looking for a man who argued with two men after a June 26 fender-bender on a Hollywood street and then pulled a gun from his trunk, shot one man dead and wounded the other.

On Aug. 22, Patricia Dwyer was killed by a shotgun blast fired at the van in which she and her husband were rushing their son to a hospital. Michael Dwyer said he flashed the van’s headlights at a car that pulled in front of him on the Riverside Freeway east of Los Angeles and slowed down. A 26-year-old air-conditioning installer was arrested and has pleaded innocent to a murder charge.

The rate of violence arising from traffic incidents is difficult to determine. The crimes fall into categories of assault or homicide, not traffic altercations.

“Most of our accidents involving fights are relatively minor in nature, and usually the fight is contained to a verbal argument or some pushing,” said Sgt. Mark Lunn, spokesman for the Los Angeles CHP headquarters.

Minor rather than major accidents are more likely to trigger fights, he said, and they are likelier during rush hour in a congested urban area than out on a highway. Temperature also changes temperament.

“We find an awful lot of argumentative confrontations that take place in heat,” Lunn said. “But it’s not epidemic level. Generally it never gets to the point of a physical altercation.”

‘Just Not Worth It’

The LAPD’s Jackson concurred, but suggested that there is enough uncertainty about who is out on the roads to make a point of avoiding confrontations.

“It’s just not worth it,” he said. “First of all, their car’s dangerous enough, let alone (the possibility of the other driver) having a gun.”

Robert Yates, a Los Angeles Department of Transportation administrator in charge of traffic control officers, said discipline evaporates as congestion worsens.

“There’s no doubt about it. As the frustration level rises, people tend to disobey all of the laws,” he said. “As we get more and more impacted we’re seeing a lot of gridlock, therefore you see a lot of frustrated drivers, a tremendous change in courtesy.”

Although it’s uncommon, “we’ve had officers literally pushed through intersections” by irate drivers, Yates said. “We’ve had several who have been run over. . . . We’ve had others who felt they had cars literally aimed at them,” he added, noting the difficulty of proving those were deliberate acts.

Studies of Aggression

Scott Fraser, a professor of psychology at the University of Southern California who has done numerous studies of aggression, maintains that the behavior of most people changes when they get behind the wheel.

“We’re not suggesting that everybody who gets behind the wheel goes crazy,” he said. “But you sure have a major alteration in a lot of individuals in terms of their sense of control, power, and the way in which they interact with others.”

Though not violent, the habit of many drivers to speed up and prevent another car from merging ahead of them is an example of protecting “personal space.” “They are engaged in displays of power and control . . . when there’s really no functional utility,” he said.