Driving Home the Point 1 Last Time: Use Common Sense

Folks, survival on the freeways is not rocket science.

Street Smart has preached and prodded. We’ve ranted and raved.

We’ve wallowed in metaphor, hyperbole and bloated, sophomoric over-exaggeration.

When that didn’t work, we resorted to the California Motor Vehicle Code and plain English. Some of you still just don’t get it, and frankly we’re pretty much tuckered out.

We’ll say it plainly, just this one more time, and then we have to go:

Drive as if you drive for a living. Drive like a courteous, safe motorist as if there were targets painted all over your car, and you will avoid the triple threat of traffic tickets, tow trucks and triage.

Or to quote one of Street Smart’s favorite movie stickup-man lines, “Okay, nobody lose their head and nobody loses their head.”

Take the simple act of merging. Why is it that two otherwise sensible, God-fearing motorists speed toward a near collision like unguided missiles when their ways meet?

Fish merge in schools by the thousands. Hormone-addled teenagers manage to merge in high school hallways without honking and flipping each other off.

Birds do it. Bees do it. Amoebas do it at a frightening rate.

Even giant corporations do it (although they need the help of lawyers who are expert in such matters).

If it’s not too personal to ask, are you doing it correctly?

Dear Street Smart:

When I took driver’s training about a million years ago (actually about 40 years ago) I learned that when merging, folks on the minor road had to yield to those on the major road, without interrupting the flow of traffic.

The city of Oxnard has seen fit to put in several merge lanes on Oxnard Boulevard, where the light turns green simultaneously for both the main road and the merging lanes. The folks in the merge lane seem to think they have the right of way over those in the regular lane.

My co-worker seems to feel that if you are in a merge lane and can manage to pull in front of the guy in the regular lane, you automatically assume the right of way. I disagree.

I understand there is such a thing as courtesy, but that shouldn’t overrule who actually has the right of way.

The California driver’s handbook doesn’t specify anything on this subject. Does California actually have a definition of “right of way” that applies to merge lanes?

Peggy Topham

Oxnard

Dear Reader:

There is indeed a law, and your co-worker is off base. (Thank the Legislature the law exists, because some folks can’t do anything without explicit instructions).

Traffic on the main road does indeed have the right of way over traffic on the ramp or lesser road, says CHP Officer David Cockrill. That means that drivers who are pulling onto freeways and main arteries--or even entering a quiet back street from their own driveways--must let traffic on the larger route go first.

If you happen to be ahead of the other motorist and traveling at least as fast, you might as well step on it and merge before you run out of ramp.

This next reader puts a finer point on it:

Dear Street Smart:

I drive for a living, and the problem I see most is the failure of onramp traffic to even approach the prevailing speed of freeway traffic before trying to merge.

The closer the speed of the merging lanes to the speed of the traffic flow means the less physical space the car will need to merge safely.

Most people don’t have a problem letting others in if they’re near the prevailing speed. Most ramps in this county easily allow you to get up to speed in time. There’s nothing more frustrating than following someone up a long, straight onramp doing 25 or 30, seeing them veer into traffic that is doing twice that speed and knowing that you’re going to have problems because of them.

Larry Drew

Ventura

Dear Reader:

Bingo.

“When you’re coming on and you’re merging into the freeway, you’re required to merge safely,” Cockrill says. “Not only pulling in between the vehicles beside you, but matching their speed. By the same token, there’s some responsibility on the part of the person on the freeway. It’s not a legal responsibility, but kind of a courtesy to let this person come onto the freeway.”

But some drivers can’t even grasp the concept. You are intruding into their lane, threatening to erode their space cushion and making them 2 milliseconds late. The nerve.

Listen. We all pay taxes on these roads. They belong to all of us. If you can’t indulge in a little give-and-take when you’re speeding along at 70 in a two-ton chunk of steel with all the murderous force of a bomb, then you don’t deserve the privilege.

Nor do you deserve the right to “regulate” the way someone else is driving just because you don’t like it. Nobody loses their head, and. . . .

Dear Street Smart:

I’m taking you to task for your half-baked response to a yahoo who wrote you from Newbury Park recounting the shenanigans he pulled when approached from the rear in the fast lane by a fast-moving car--which was then pulled over by the CHP.

You should have pointed out to him that merely because he was not the one pulled over did not validate his personal “road agenda”--which has nothing to do with safe driving.

Recently, the media has focused on “road rage” as a sensational topic without focusing on the type of driver who deliberately creates dangerous situations. I wonder if the CHP would be willing to give us a month of aggressive ticketing for all the driving infractions not including speeding that are really the cause of the deterioration of safe conditions on our freeways.

Janice Nigro

Thousand Oaks

Dear Reader:

It seems you feel we were not harsh enough with the fellow. Possibly so. What we meant to say is that the only real police on the freeways are the dudes with the flashing blue lights, so the rest of you would-be enforcers ought to cool it.

As for “road rage,” Street Smart began writing all about it just before Whittier psychologist Arnold Nerenberg pumped it up into a national buzzword.

And long before Street Smart was even a twinkle in his editor’s eye, road rage was popping up in gritted teeth, dented fenders, burst veins and bullet wounds all over Southern California.

“I came on in 1988; I was one of Gov. Deukmejian’s 500 additional officers that were supposed to go out and take care of the freeway shooting situation that was happening down in L.A. in the mid-80s,” Cockrill recalls.

Next week, a new writer will take over this column, so this is Street Smart’s one chance to thank all his loyal readers for helping him fill this space, ferret out the facts and stay true. And this is his last sermon:

Your car is not a fist. It is not a suit of armor. It is not a weapon. It is not a toy.

Driving is not a right. It is not a sport. It is not a war. It is not a joke.

The freeway is not a racetrack. It is not a playground. It is not a gladiators’ arena.

It is a place of danger and freedom that we must all learn to share with the drunks, the crazies, the jerks and ninnies in our daily struggle to make it from A to B.

Treat the whole affair with some respect, and you’ll get there in one piece.

Peace to you all. Drive safely.

Peeved? Baffled? Miffed? Or merely perplexed? Street Smart answers your most probing questions about the joys and horrors of driving around Ventura County. Write to: Street Smart, Los Angeles Times, 93 S. Chestnut St., Ventura 93001, or call our Sound Off line, 653-7546. Include a simple sketch if needed to help explain. In any case, include your full name, address, and day and evening phone numbers. Street Smart cannot answer anonymous queries, and might edit your letter.