Driving Habits : Coping With Violence on the Freeway

Bob Williams, owner of Bob’s Plumbing & Heating, isn’t taking any chances. Driving down Los Angeles’ freeways in his pickup these days, on his way to unplug one more drain, he no longer leans on his horn if somebody is hogging the fast lane.

“I haven’t honked at anyone in at least a week,” Williams said proudly. “And if someone wants to pass me, I let them.”

And Williams makes a point to stare straight ahead as other drivers zoom by. “They might misunderstand my glance and pull out a shotgun or something,” he explained.

Limousine driver Giaus Ibe no longer honks, either. And he has stopped weaving in and out of traffic in his rush to pick up and deposit the rich and famous at Los Angeles International Airport.

Mood of Paranoia

“If my lane is going a little slow, I just stay there,” Ibe said. “I wouldn’t want anyone to think I was trying to cut them off. I think twice before I head onto the freeways because you never know who the next target will be,” he added.

Such is the mood of paranoia that has spread in recent weeks like a rush-hour traffic advisory among the motoring masses of the Los Angeles area.

In a county where people live to drive and drive to live, law enforcement officials, behavioral psychologists and just plain motorists all are trying to come to grips with a baffling and unprecedented spate of traffic violence.

Since June 18, there have been at least 16 random shooting incidents, a fad of violence with no clear motivation or pattern, and no end in sight. Four people have died and two have been injured. Arrests have been made in only four cases.

There were three more shooting incidents Thursday, including one in which a Claremont police officer was fired upon by a passenger in a passing car. The officer was writing a traffic ticket on the San Bernardino Freeway. The bullet missed.

Rocks Hurled

Nor was anyone hurt Thursday morning on the Golden State Freeway near Sun Valley, where someone tossing hundreds of rocks from an overpass shattered the windshields of 10 cars, including an unmarked CHP cruiser. (Story in Part II, Page 1.)

With new reports of highway violence seemingly every day, the terror grows, though law enforcement officials say it is an irrational fear when compared to other dangers of the road. They point out that last year, 1,015 people were killed and 103,561 were injured in the 68,083 traffic accidents that occurred in Los Angeles County alone.

Authorities say that many reported shootings are difficult, if not impossible, to verify. Moreover, each incident tends to spawn flurries of telephone calls to police hot lines, with motorists frantically recounting episodes of being tailgated, cut off or threatened by other drivers pointing guns in their direction.

People have become so excited that on Wednesday, CHP officers temporarily shut down all traffic on the eastbound Santa Monica Freeway and the northbound Golden State Freeway when a security guard spotted what he thought was a passing gunman armed with an Uzi rifle. It turned out to be an 8-year-old boy with a squirt gun.

Such stories have done little to dampen hysteria among the 5.28 million licensed drivers in Los Angeles County, many of whom can’t help but wonder about that suspicious-looking guy cruising alongside them in the next lane or the one barreling up from behind.

“I get goose bumps now every time someone tailgates me,” admitted Richard Balain, a 19-year-old pizza deliveryman.

Fearful of becoming the next victim, many drivers are actually being nice to each other, highway patrolmen, tow truck operators and other highway travelers report.

Fewer drivers are hogging the fast lane or cruising inches from the next guy’s bumper. Many more are dutifully signaling their turns and mouthing “Please, after you,” as they allow fellow motorists to merge ahead of them into traffic.

On more than a few thoroughfares, “Outta my way, you jerk!” is yielding to “Have a nice day.”

Effect on Lawmen

Even otherwise staid policemen are acting differently this summer.

Officer Bill Frio used to imagine himself the king of commuters as he battled his way through highway traffic from his Orange County home to his plainclothes office job at Los Angeles Police Department headquarters.

“I’d be in my own car, but being a cop, you’re used to ruling the road so when some guy would come up on my bumper, I’d think, ‘Screw him. He can go ‘round,’ ” said Frio, an LAPD spokesman. “Now, I get out of the way.

“My wife’s a psychologist . . . and she said there’s a lot of nuts out there, and if this is the nuts’ forum this week--shooting drivers--so be it. I’m going to be careful.”

Frio sometimes used to forget his gun and leave it at work, or toss it into his briefcase when he left. Now he makes sure to strap it on before he puts his car in gear.

So worried is taxi driver Seleshi Telahun that he no longer lights up cigarettes in his cab for fear that puffing away could distract him from watching other drivers who might blow him away. Lately he has begun counseling his passengers to avoid yelling out the windows because “moves like those could cost us our lives.”

“I used to always take people on the freeways. Now . . . I always ask a passenger if he or she would mind if I take the side streets,” said Telahun, 35. “I’ve even had a couple of passengers request that I not take the freeways. They didn’t mind paying the higher fare. They tell me they would rather shell out a couple of extra dollars but not be shot at.”

Other cities have been plagued by rashes of freeway violence, but never has the violence been as intense as it has in Los Angeles this summer.

In Houston, for example, police recorded 161 incidents of violence on the freeways and feeder roads, including several shootings, during a 10-month period in 1982. One man celebrating his wedding day was stabbed when he and his bride pulled up at a stop sign, lingered to kiss, and apparently angered another driver who was waiting impatiently behind them.

In Denver between 1982 and 1985, four motorists were shot to death and six seriously injured after unrelated traffic altercations.

Police in both cities said that their respective outbreaks of highway violence eventually tapered off.

“We know it wasn’t summer that did it--the heat and tempers and all--because a lot of it was in the winter,” said Denver Police Detective John Wyckoff. “I know at the time we just tried to educate everybody on how not to go looking for fights on the highway. Thank God, it just came to an end.”

There have been even more recent spates of motorist versus motorist violence in other parts of the United States. This summer, there have been reports of isolated shootings in New York, Connecticut and Arizona.

Bay Area Violence

Southern California is not the only part of the state where short-tempered drivers explode into violence. In the increasingly congested San Francisco Bay Area, at least seven violent incidents among motorists, including one death, have been reported in the last month.

Last week, a 17-year-old girl was shot and killed when the driver of the car in which she was riding argued with a carload of youths on a surface street in suburban Redwood City, south of San Francisco. No arrests have been made.

Three incidents occurred in July on the Bay Bridge, a perpetually clogged span between San Francisco and Oakland. Three others have taken place on the Bayshore Freeway near San Francisco International Airport, where repaving and widening efforts by construction crews have often left traffic snarled and motorists snarling.

In Los Angeles, the most prominent theory of why gunfire has erupted on the highways this summer focuses on the mixture of traffic congestion and heat. Frustrated by worsening bumper-to-bumper traffic and high temperatures, some motorists can only take it so long before they boil over like overheated radiators, or so the theory goes.

“We ain’t seen nothing yet,” observed CHP Officer Howard Powell. “It’s going to get worse before it gets better because the temperatures haven’t even really gotten that high yet.”

Yet of the shootings thus far, most have occurred on weekends when traffic is light, or at night when temperatures are cool, or on vast, open stretches of highway where even cautious drivers chug along at the 55 m.p.h. speed limit.

Mental health experts and authorities speculate that initial shootings may have been prompted by genuine hostility. Unstable individuals felt slighted on the highway when they were tailgated or cut off by another motorist and sought immediate revenge. Many shootings that have occurred since, they say, may be the work of copycats.

Some observers say media attention has fueled the problem by encouraging publicity hungry people to shoot even more. A few psychologists like Ray Novaco, a UC Irvine social ecology professor, have suggested that the media should downplay highway violence until experts better understand the phenomenon.

“Any time these things happen it provides marginal personalities a script to enact,” Novaco said.

He and other academics use terms like “poor impulse control” and “aberrant behavior” to describe the characters who have been spotted flourishing weapons on the freeway. But Bay Yellow Cab supervisor Chuck Esters in Santa Ana offers this assessment:

“People are hearing this on the radio and saying, ‘That sounds like a good idea! Let’s shoot somebody.’ I think people play follow the leader on some things.”

Specific Targets

Gunplay on Los Angeles streets and highways is not new, particularly in areas where gang activity is found. In many of those cases, however, the victim was specifically targeted. Police believe such may have been the case in two of the recent highway shootings.

No local law enforcement agency keeps track of highway shootings, but officers generally agree that they have been rare in the past. Police officers recall with almost a sense of nostalgia the days earlier this year when irate motorists simply banged each others’ bumpers or stopped on the shoulder of the road and scuffled.

“It’s a drastic change from fists to guns,” said CHP Officer Powell. “More and more people are arming themselves these days. In our society, people think they are getting the short end of the stick. They feel like the criminals are getting off easy, so they’re taking justice into their own hands whenever they can.”

Drivers with mobile telephones, Powell said, have proven a particular ally in the war against highway violence. Dozens have immediately notified the CHP when they have observed suspicious activity.

The Highway Patrol has made a point of cracking down on aggressive motorists. After the first shooting on June 18, officers were briefed on how to better recognize angry freeway drivers, Powell said.

“Some prime signs are following too close, changing lanes often and passing in the center lanes,” Powell said. “We used to just signal to people on the road, but now we pull them over, conduct a field interview and then charge them for violations. This way we can curtail the physical altercations before they happen.”

Officer More Careful

Powell said he personally has become more cautious when he orders cars and trucks to the roadside. “Now I carefully scan every vehicle I stop no matter what the reason to see if they are carrying any firearms inside.”

Two summers ago, gun store operators throughout Southern California reported doing a brisk business as thousands of fearful residents armed themselves against another anonymous but no less deadly threat--a serial killer who came to be known as the Night Stalker.

This time around, community interest in being armed does not seem widespread. Gun sales have changed little in recent weeks, firearms dealers report.

Nevertheless, freeway violence has proven a boon to some.

In Monterey Park, driving instructors have noticed a slight upturn in their enrollments. At the California Driving School, “students now pay a little more attention in class to the stuff on freeway driving,” said Carl Beatty, the school’s training director. “Their heads perk up when we start talking about entering freeways, passing on freeways and how to avoid confrontations.

A Compton psychiatrist, meanwhile, is offering $120-an-hour “rage therapy” sessions for freeway drivers who experience uncontrollable anger and need to learn how to handle it.

The sessions also are open to those who want to learn how to cope with the rage of others.

Times staff writers Mark Landsbaum and Mariann Hansen in Orange County, Dan Morain in San Francisco and Craig Quintana in Los Angeles contributed to this story.