STREET SMART : Rules for Entering the Freeway Are Clear--on Paper

Dear Street Smart:

Please clarify traffic laws regarding entrance onto a freeway. I am under the impression that the driver entering the freeway must do so in a safe manner; it is not the driver already on the freeway that must slow down and “let” someone onto the freeway. Of course, there are occasions when a driver must do just that or even move into another lane.

But how is the responsibility placed legally? I seem to remember reading that one reason the freeway ramps are so long is to provide ample space to reach 55 m.p.h. and safely enter the lane of traffic.

Judi Maxwell

Lake Forest

SS: This is one of those rules of the road that sounds simple but in reality rarely is. The law says that traffic on the roadway has the right of way and cars merging from an on-ramp must yield, according to Lt. Ron Phulps of the California Highway Patrol.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t always work that way, Phulps noted. We’ve all experienced it: You speed up to allow some guy on and he speeds up, you slow down and he slows down. Phulps said that “it’s one of those gray areas” and that tickets are rarely issued in the battle over right of way at on-ramps.

The best bet is for motorists to behave courteously, always keeping in mind that it’s the primary responsibility of merging traffic to blend with the flow of the freeway.

Dear Street Smart:

These are names of streets in Cypress Village. They must rate as among the worst group of names one can imagine for any area: Anticost Way, Bylot Way, Cottle Way, Fripps Way, Fogo Way, Grosse Way, Grindstone Way, Harkers Court, McNutt Way, Quirpon Way, Shippigan Way, Vinalhaven Court and Wadham Way. I have no idea where these names came from but I live in the area. I am not signing this. I must live with my neighbors.

Anonymous

Cypress

SS: Those street names certainly display some ingenuity. Speaking strictly in jest, I wonder if the neighbors on Bylot Way spend an inordinate amount of time at Nordstrom? Did inhabitants of Anticost Way get great deals on their homes? And I suppose people on Vinalhaven Street wouldn’t be caught dead with leather seats in their cars.

All joking aside, many homeowners on those Cypress thoroughfares may have a fondness for their street names, which reportedly were concocted by a developer who wanted to give his tract a South Pacific theme. But if residents don’t like the names, there is a way they can make a change.

Jim Hill, assistant city engineer in Cypress, said homeowners desperately seeking a new street name can petition their neighbors, then present the signatures to the City Council for consideration. The city staff and attorney would investigate the proposal and comment on any legal ramifications. It would then be up to the council to either approve or reject a new name. For the record, Hill knows of no one in Cypress who has made such a request.

Of course, Cypress is hardly alone among Orange County cities in having some unusual street names. Some of my favorites are in the unincorporated Trabuco Canyon area, like the intersection of Oakie Dokie and Hunky Dory lanes. If you’ve got a street you love or loathe, let us know. We’d like to hear how some of Orange County’s more colorfully named streets got their monikers.

Dear Street Smart:

For the past few months, WonderVolvo hadn’t been quite itself. Not starting well, stalling out, belching smoke. Bengst the mechanic said, as it stood, the car was worth about $50 to $100. But if I put in a new transmission and had it painted and fixed up the inside, it might be worth $50 to $100.

So I decided to give the car to El Toro High School’s auto shop class. The teacher was quite clear about what they’d do: They’d work on the car, practicing whatever it was they needed to practice. Then they might fix it and sell it to a student for very little money, or (more likely) they might cut it up for parts.

He wanted to be very clear about the latter, he said, because they get this kind of call from time to time and some people don’t like the idea of having their beloved old car cut up. On the other hand, I carry a signed organ donor card and I’m willing to allow my body to be cut up for the common good . . . so why not my car. Only two months short of 21 years and at 189,000-plus miles, WonderVolvo went off into the sunset.

Last year, my children had a potentially terrible accident (the van rolled three and half times and was totaled--four were thrown out) but no one was really hurt. Julie told me that each one of the seven of them in the van had lost one thing (a pin fell off her jacket, for instance) and we decided that those things had been a sacrifice to the accident gods. So when I learned that my daughter Laura (and her friends and her school, Menlo College in Atherton) had been unscathed by the earthquake, I decided that WonderVolvo had been a sacrifice to the earthquake gods. It seems both fair and circular: The car took me to the hospital to have Laura when it was two weeks old; and in its old age, it guaranteed her safety.

Anyway, that’s the way I like to think of it.

Kathie Gardner

Laguna Niguel

SS: Alas, all good things must come to an end, and so it is with true-blue jalopies. Kathie and WonderVolvo were featured in a January column in The Times about owners of old cars. Thanks for updating us on the fate of your chrome comrade. We’re eager to hear from others about the life and times of their clunker.

Street Smart appears Mondays in the Orange County section of The Times.