Mutant Drivers Still a Problem After Nuclear Holocaust

Driving would be so much easier if everyone and everything would just GET OUT OF THE WAY.

You could arrive at work, school and the movies on time. You could devour the scenery instead of the road devouring you. You could be home by now.

If it weren’t for the darned obstacles, you could have a life.

Picture riding shotgun with Charlton Heston in a hot rod ragtop Cougar through an “Omega Man” world, ghosting down the empty Ventura Freeway at 110 mph with naught but a few tattered mutants in your way.

You blow through stoplights on Vineyard, squeal through fishtail turns on Johnson Drive, sneer at the abandoned CHP barracks in Ventura, and arrive at work jazzed. You stomp triumphantly into the office in torn leather, hobnail boots and a grin instead of your usual worker-bee uniform, smog-thickened hair and defeated slouch.

Of course, in a post-nuclear kind of roadscape, you’d have no co-workers, family or friends left--or even convenience store clerks to sell you gas, Cheetos and Slurpees.

All right. Bad idea.

But so is the all-too-human desire to ignore the obstacles standing between you and your destination--to go through things and not around them.

The lights and lane lines keep you from smashing other cars. The signs keep other cars from smashing you.

The other cars carry your fellow motorists, without whom you would be just as bored and pathetic as the Omega Man. Mutants make for dull chat. They’re probably crummy drivers too.

Dear Street Smart:

What, if anything, can be done to eliminate the traffic snarl at the Las Posas Road exit of the shopping center in Camarillo where Target, Ross and Oshman’s are located?

Driving to the shopping center from the Ventura Freeway is easy. Leaving the center to get on the freeway is dangerous and confusing.

We exited the center via the driveway closest to Target, where there are two left-turn lanes and a third lane for right turns only. However, we watched several cars turning left from that third lane.

With the holidays rapidly approaching, this situation should be closely monitored.

Edna Conroy

Ventura

Dear Reader:

We hate to break it to you, but you’re not supposed to use that exit. Or so says Dan Greeley, director of Engineering Services for Camarillo.

“The way to stay away from that snarl is to follow the on-site direction signs, and go out onto Ventura Boulevard and then turn onto Las Posas,” he says. “If you exit there [directly onto Las Posas], you’ve got to go all the way across all those lanes to make a U-turn at Ventura Boulevard” and reach the freeway.

Of course, it’s a free country. You may actually find it thrilling and challenging to try zooming across all those lanes and diving onto northbound Las Posas to ease onto the freeway.

Personally, Street Smart would rather drive around the lot following the signs rather than risk the cowboy driving act.

But as the French say, chacun a son gout or, loosely translated, whatever floats your boat.

Dear Street Smart:

After various utility companies have spent several years trenching Valley Vista Drive in the Las Posas area of Camarillo, is there a plan for resurfacing the road?

Your information will be appreciated.

Cecelia Davis

Camarillo

Dear Reader:

What, you don’t like driving over rippled asphalt and those skid-provoking, frame-rattling iron “slipper plates?” Getting tired of wrestling to keep your car on the road and having to outsmart your anti-lock brakes during panic stops on washboard pavement?

Personally, Street Smart gets a charge out of having his front wheels wrenched this way and that. It makes the car feel more “responsive.”

But then, Street Smart likes to stick his head out the window and drive with his tongue flapping in the breeze.

But we digress.

Camarillo’s Dan Greeley says Valley Vista is being paved, at long last. The section of that county road project that passes through the city of Camarillo should be finished within a week or so, with the rest to follow soon thereafter.

Dear Street Smart:

The Tapo Canyon offramp of the westbound Simi Valley Freeway has a long-term problem for those who need to turn right onto Tapo Canyon Road.

There are two lanes, and both allow left turns. But there is very little room to squeeze by on the right.

At different times in the evening rush-hour, it is not uncommon to have to wait through two or three light cycles to turn right because the left-turners are waiting for the light.

I remember hearing that re-striping or a right-turn widening project was planned a year or more ago. Can you investigate this, please?

Dan Forrester

Simi Valley

Dear Reader:

We hate disappointing our readers.

No, we would rather swim at the bottom of a reclaimed-oil storage tank than say street problems are unsolvable or at least unavoidable.

But Caltrans has looked this offramp up, down, left right and sideways, and it seems you’re stuck with the wait.

Engineers studied the site, took measurements and observed conditions at the bottom of the ramp, much as they did several years ago, says Caltrans spokeswoman Pat Reid.

Little has changed, and little will change in the near future, she says.

“There is not any room to re-stripe the offramp to add an additional lane, and there is not enough justification to physically widen [it] at this time,” Reid said.

The left lane is for left turns only, while the right lane is for turns in either direction. And the ratio in the right lane has been two left turns for every right, so “the current lane designation remains optimal for the current conditions,” Reid explains.

Sounds like you’re in a hapless minority of right-turners, doomed to wait at the mercy of the majority. At least you will be until Simi Valley allows massive development of the hills in your neck of the woods and the right-turners gain the upper hand.

Street Smart now must trudge off to pay his penance, flippers and nose plugs in hand. He wonders if the oil will be good for his split ends--and whether he’ll get cramps for diving in less than an hour after breakfast.

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, c/o Mack Reed, Los Angeles Times, 93 S. Chestnut St., Ventura 93001. Include a simple sketch if needed to help explain. E-mail us at Mack.Reed@latimes.com or call our Sound Off line, 653-7546. 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.