Avoiding Freeways Doesn’t Evade Gunfire

For area motorists who decided to steer clear of Los Angeles freeways two years ago to avoid being shot at by congestion-addled drivers, researchers have some news.

If you sought refuge on city streets, you were heading right into the line of fire.

Researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control found that most of the roadway gun assaults that occurred between June and August, 1987, took place on surface streets, not freeways--a fact they say challenges the wisdom of altering one’s commuting patterns to avoid being shot.

“Despite the fact that the proportion of all roadway assaults is increasing on freeways, the public’s perception that such assaults can be avoided by staying off the freeways appears to be unfounded,” researchers wrote last week in the Journal of the American Medical Assn.

The group analyzed the highly publicized rash of gun incidents for any underlying patterns and found:

- State, county and Los Angeles law enforcement authorities received 137 reports of roadway firearm incidents between June 18 and Aug. 31. Thirty-nine percent were brandishings and 61% were shootings. Two of the shootings were fatal.

- Of the assaults, 63% occurred on surface streets, 36% on freeways and less than 1% on highways. More than a third of the victims reported having had some sort of altercation with the suspect over such things as tailgating, merging and lane-changing.

- There appeared to be some connection between freeway congestion and assaults: The most heavily traveled freeways had the highest assault rate. However, more than two-thirds of the assaults occurred outside rush hour.