Examining the Workings of the Beast That Drives Us

Time for a detour.

This week, Street Smart must briefly shun the cold mechanics of steel and concrete and focus a jaundiced eye on the warm mysteries of that scary, electrified blob of meat that guides our fate.

Join us, won’t you, as we cruise back down the evolutionary chain to examine the brain.

Not the human brain, mind you. We’re talking about the greedy, brutal traces of ape intelligence locked deep inside the genetic code of every driver in Ventura County.

We’re talking about that grunting, hairy thing that claws at the wheel, shoves aside reason, common sense and every shred of high school driver’s ed and makes certain drivers swerve, tailgate, speed and generally ignore the rest of the world--except when they are yelling, cursing, gesturing obscenely and cutting others off.

We don’t mean you overworked, slightly inattentive souls who might cruise 5 mph over the limit, roll slowly through a stop sign or drift briefly between freeway lanes until the rumble of Bott’s dots jolt you back in line.

We’re talking about Ventura County’s truly bad drivers.

Dear Street Smart:

A short while back, one of your readers wrote to complain about those “speed demons” on the Conejo Grade. I have to admit that I am one of them, and I do occasionally weave through traffic.

At the bottom of the grade, I speed up in order to get a good start before I inevitably lose speed, and I do this in the fast lane. But there are often cars in the left two lanes that slow to speeds well below 60 shortly after Camarillo Springs Road.

Since I don’t own an overly powerful car, following them greatly impedes my progress going up the hill. I have nothing against those who drive slowly, but when they insist on staying in the leftmost lanes, they congest traffic. To avoid them, I pull right to maintain a good speed.

Brian Chong

Thousand Oaks

Dear Reader:

Look, we know the impulse, but you must fight your baser nature. Four legs bad, two legs good. Are we not men?

Animal instinct urges you to work up a good head of steam by the time you hit the grade (heretofore known as Poop-Out Pass) so you can make it up and over without having to--God forbid--downshift.

Street Smart sympathizes, being on intimate terms with our inner chimp.

We even have a snapshot. You know that science textbook illustration “The Ages of Man,” where the Homo sapien proudly leads a parade of his genetic forebears out of their anvil-browed, mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging past?

Street Smart is the third ape from the right.

Catch us at the wrong time of day (i.e. running late at rush hour) and we’re out there leadfooting it toward the incline with the rest, although we have not yet stooped to zipping into the slow lane just to stay at 65 mph.

So, grunting, we nurture our simian tool-using traits: Street Smart like gear box. Oo, oo. Stomp clutch. Push stick. Downshift. Mash gas. Go. Unh. good.

“The grade is a mile long,” says California Highway Patrol Officer David Cockrill. “It’s a temporary setback at most. If the guy realizes that traffic’s going to slow down, sooner or later we’re all going to make it over the top and go down the other side and get up to speed again.”

The uphill side of the grade sees more wrecks than the downhill side, many of them caused by speeders in the slow lanes, Cockrill says.

The message here? Think Zen calm. Soothe the beast within. You’ll get there without risking a wreck.

Dear Street Smart:

You wrote you would be doing a column on scofflaws who endanger lives. I have two in mind that I would like to call to the attention of your readers:

1. People who believe that turning their turn signal on gives them the right of way to change lanes. I believe the law allows a lane change only when it does not affect the vehicle already in the lane.

2. People who totally ignore solid white lines that symbolize either traffic dividers or bicycle lanes. It is illegal for cars to cross these white lines unless they are broken.

Kermit Heid

Moorpark

Dear Reader:

Dead right, and mostly right.

In switching lanes, “good positioning is as important as anything,” says Bruce Elkins, who ought to know. He founded a chain of traffic schools open at 75 places around Southern California.

“Signaling in itself” is not enough, he says. “You can’t make a left in a left-turn lane just because you use your left-turn signal. You can’t turn until it’s safe.”

And listen: Be glad they signal at all. Street Smart learned how to drive in the gnarly Northeast, where some boneheads from Massachusetts and Jersey zigzag signal-less across four lanes at 70 mph until they find the fastest hole in rush-hour traffic--even if it’s three feet between two semis in the fast lane.

But most California drivers are good about signaling, because they know failing to do so invites a wreck or a shooting.

You’re also right about those white lines--to a point. You can cross them to leave or enter driveways. But if you cross them to drive on the shoulder at freeway speeds, you are breaking the law, says the CHP’s David Cockrill.

“With a bicycle lane, it’s the same thing,” he says. “You cannot drive in the bicycle lane until you get to the end near an intersection where the line is broken.”

Dear Street Smart:

I so enjoy your column--especially your sense of humor recently.

Several months ago, we had occasion to drive from Ventura to Encinitas using the 101 Freeway and the Golden State Freeway, and at Christmastime, as we do each year, we drove to San Francisco via the 101 Freeway and the 280 Freeway.

On both trips, the freeways were moving smoothly and most drivers were driving sensibly. I felt so grateful that long ago engineers had the wisdom and foresight to build the freeways.

Unfortunately, there are always those few “lane-switching yahoos” and tailgaters (my pet peeve) who cause accidents.

Mary Johnston

Ventura

Dear Reader:

California’s freeway system is indeed a marvel. From a loose network of cow paths, cart tracks and one-lane ranch roads, California’s transportation workers have hewn more than 15,000 miles of freeways and highways, with 1,801 miles of freeways alone in Southern California.

All it takes to bring mighty Caltrans’ smooth concrete, gentle curves and clear signage to a nasty, grinding halt is one headstrong motorist acting like a total idiot at rush hour.

Tailgaters, grrrr. Don’t get us started. In fact, we’re going to let the experts take over the column so we can go away and cool down for a minute:

Tailgating is one of the common causes of rear-end collisions, and usually the tailgater is at fault, according to Cockrill of the CHP.

Are you tailgating? Yes, unless you are allowing at least two seconds’ traveling distance between your car and the vehicle in front of you.

Pick a landmark--a pole or an overpass. When the car ahead passes it, start counting: one-one thousand, two-one thousand. If you pass the marker before the two seconds passes, you are too close.

“If it’s inclement weather, say raining or heavy fog, they say you should increase your distance to three seconds,” Cockrill says.

Elkins says some traffic school students argue they tailgate because they don’t want anyone else to slip into line in front of them.

“My theory is that the cars are going to come in no matter what,” he says. “You don’t own the lane. If they want to come in my lane, go ahead, be my guest. Just don’t hit me.”

Street Smart returns here to say that if someone is tailgating you, you can tap your brakes very lightly, just enough to make the brake lamps light up and let the tailgater know you don’t appreciate such high-speed intimacy. If that fails, move over to let them pass.

But Cockrill points out you might be safer just moving into the next lane in the first place: “There’s so many people who have the potential for so much violence that you don’t know who you’re dealing with out there.”

Sometimes, the worst part of the chimp’s tool-using brain takes over, and the tailgater tries to trade paint--or pull a gun, as one Ventura County motorist was accused of recently. Better--long before that point--to relinquish the banana. The trees are full of them.

COMING UP: More bad drivers, plus answers to road mysteries, freeway riddles and places that make you say, “What the . . . ?” We need letters of all kinds. Please write.

Peeved? Baffled? Miffed? Or merely perplexed? Street Smart can answer your most probing questions about the joys and horrors of driving around Ventura County. Write to: Street Smart, c/o Mack Reed, Los Angeles Times Ventura County Edition, 1445 Los Angeles Ave., Room 208, Simi Valley 93065. Include a simple sketch if needed to help explain your question. Or call our Sound Off line, 653-7546. In either case, include your full name, address and day and evening phone numbers. Street Smart cannot answer anonymous queries and might edit your letter.