Dear Street Smart:What are my legal and...

Dear Street Smart:

What are my legal and ethical responsibilities when parking in a mini-mall or strip mall that has signs limiting each parking space to a certain business?

Are they trying to intimidate me, or should I just park where I want?

Bruce Galt

North Hollywood

Dear Reader:

As to whether the mall management is trying to intimidate you, it’s impossible to say. But the mall’s owners are perfectly within their rights to dispose of their parking spaces however they wish, according to city officials.

“You have to bear in mind that that’s private property,” says Jack Reynolds of the Los Angeles Department of Transportation, “and the owners of that property can designate who they want to park in various spaces.”

Enforcing their will is another matter.

If proprietors want the city to be their watchdog, they must first post signs stating the parking limitations and citing the municipal or vehicle codes that a scofflaw would violate by parking there, Reynolds says.

Even then, a city parking bouncer would only make an appearance if the management complains, not as part of any general patrol. When it comes to private property, Reynolds says, the only violations the city routinely sweeps for are misuse of handicapped spaces and blocking designated fire lanes.

So the odds of beating the system are probably in your favor if you’re parking for just a few minutes in a space allotted to a dry cleaner when you’ve really stopped to buy milk.

But that’s where your ethical responsibilities come in. Street Smart can’t help you on that one.

Dear Street Smart:

While I realize my eyes are aging and more sensitive to light, is there anything that can be done about motorists who insist on either: A) using high beams while driving under perfect conditions on well-lighted streets and freeways, or B) using both pairs of headlights (top) and fog lights (bottom) under ordinary driving conditions?

Nancy Victor

North Hollywood

Dear Reader:

Street Smart is happy to illuminate this issue for you.

When it comes to fog lights, Officer Glen Dominguez of the California Highway Patrol says the right time to use them is in inclement weather and, fittingly enough, fog.

“Otherwise they’re not really needed,” he says. But neither are they illegal to have on under ordinary driving conditions, unless they actually disrupt traffic by blinding motorists.

High beams are another story. A motorist driving with his high beams on must dim them to normal strength within 500 feet of an oncoming driver (who usually gives a reminder by flashing his own highs). When approaching another car from behind, you must switch off your high beams within 300 feet.

That’s the law. “We can cite you on that one,” Dominguez says.

Dear Street Smart:

When you head south on Lankershim Boulevard into Universal City, the left-turn lane onto Universal Terrace Parkway is a disaster. There are way too many cars making a left turn, and there is only one lane. It needs a left-turn arrow desperately. Can something be done about this?

Jeff Stanger

Studio City

Dear Reader:

You’ll be pleased to learn that something is being done.

According to city transportation engineer Brian Gallagher, the area you mention is undergoing traffic improvements right now, courtesy of private funding from MCA, the entertainment giant that owns Universal Studios.

By summer, Gallagher says, there should be a longer left-turn lane for cars to queue up, and a new left-turn arrow will be installed. The new signal will be of the “protective-permissive” variety, which allows motorists to make a protected left turn with the arrow and then, when the arrow fades to a regular green light, to turn when they judge it safe.

Furthermore, by the year 2000, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority will add a second left-turn lane onto Universal Terrace Parkway, to coincide with the opening of a new subway station on Lankershim. The additional turn lane will be part of a 22-foot widening of Lankershim that the authority agreed to perform under an agreement it struck with MCA after a fractious debate over the planned Metro Rail station location.