Defending the Right to Bare Feet While Behind the Wheel
Dear Street Smart:
Please answer the following question for me in order to settle a long-running friendly disagreement with my husband. Many times while driving, I remove my shoes. If my husband is with me, he says this is against the law. Please straighten us out on this issue, thank you.
Kathy Parker
Seal Beach
Your husband is wrong. But tell him not to feel too bad. For some inexplicable reason, just about everyone in the state seems to have been brought up believing that driving barefoot was against the law.
“It probably falls under what you would call an urban myth,” CHP spokesman Steve Kohler said.
Dear Street Smart:
I have been honked at and given the “finger” because I refused to make a right turn against a red light when intersecting traffic has two left turn lanes and U-turns are permitted into the lane to which I would be turning right. I feel it is impossible to predict who will merely turn left and who will make a U-turn. I wait until the inside left turn lane is empty. What does the law say?
Virginia Griest
Huntington Beach
The law leaves right turns to a driver’s discretion. While it permits you to turn right against a red light when it’s safe, it certainly doesn’t require you to do so.
“She is, in essence, being a good driver,” said Sandra Houston, a CHP spokeswoman. “She is correct in saying that she can’t turn right safely because she can’t predict where the car in the inside left-turn lane will make its U-turn.”
Instead of the obscene hand gestures, Houston says, you ought to be getting a different kind of signal. “Give her a high-five for being a safe driver.”
Dear Street Smart:
Our pet peeve: drivers not using turn-signal indicators.
Having just studied for the drivers test, we find that the California Drivers Handbook, 1997, says that you should use a signal light when a hand or arm signal cannot be easily seen. We hate that there is little adherence to this requirement. Drivers often change lanes and make turns without any type of signal. What is being done about this violation?
Laurie and Bob Reynolds
San Clemente
Kohler says the number of accidents resulting from people not signaling has not risen appreciably in the last five years. In 1995, he said, there were more than 23,000 accidents in the state resulting from improper turning or unsafe lane changes, many of them involving improper signaling.
Whenever the CHP sees someone failing to signal, Kohler said, “we take some form of enforcement action. It’s one of my pet peeves too.”
Street Smart appears Mondays in The Times Orange County Edition. Readers are invited to submit comments and questions about traffic, commuting and what makes it difficult to get around in Orange County. Include simple sketches if helpful. Letters may be published in upcoming columns. Please write to David Haldane, c/o Street Smart, The Times Orange County Edition, P.O. Box 2008, Costa Mesa, CA 92626, send faxes to (714) 966-7711 or e-mail him at David.Haldane@latimes.com. Include your full name, address and day and evening phone numbers. Letters may be edited, and no anonymous letters will be accepted.
