Unless You’re in Your Car, Read This

The other day I saw a guy in a blue Buick reading this newspaper while driving on the freeway. Honest. He had it folded and propped up on the steering wheel, right under his commuter coffee cup.

Now this didn’t really surprise me--what on the freeways surprises any of us anymore?--but it did get me to thinking about this new column. What can I write, I asked myself, that will be so meaningful that people will read it at 80 mph? The answer is easy: I can write about you.

This spot in the paper will be devoted every Monday to the tales and troubles of the freeways, roads, rails and buses that carry us all to work and, hopefully, back home at the end of the day.

We want to hear from you (and answer your questions) on everything from the big picture of future transportation projects to the nuts and bolts of the California vehicle code. Car pools and potholes, shortcuts and smart streets, light rail and heavy construction.

This column should be where the rubber meets the road. So let’s hear from you. And for the love of Pete, if you’re on the 405 right now, stop reading and slow down.

Or at least pull over until you finish.

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FOR WHOM THE BILL TOLLS: For two weeks, Thomas Holder has gone to his mailbox braced for the worst, expecting to see another one of those official-looking envelopes. You can forgive the man for being a skeptic.

“They say they got it cleared up, but we’ll see,” Holder said ruefully. “We’ll see.”

Last month, Holder’s ordeal was chronicled in these pages. He’s the Newport Beach man who found himself flailing against a toll-road bureaucracy that was bombarding him with tickets--20 of them, totaling a jaw-dropping $6,550. The tickets accused him of flouting the toll on the 91 Express Lanes, and his receipts, letters, phone calls and faxes could not stem the tide of citations.

Finally, a call from a reporter (followed by media interest as far-flung as Australian radio) slammed the brakes on the malfunctioning bureaucratic machine. The fines have been wiped out. No new tickets have arrived. “At least not yet,” Holder growled last week.

Holder’s problems with the toll road are extreme, but not isolated. Angry drivers are packing the offices of the roadway’s managers and overwhelming their phone lines with billing problems. The 3-year-old, 10-mile toll road boasts the first fully automated tollbooths in the country and handles 30,000 customers a day. But, of course, the system has some bugs.

Reader Muriel MacDonald-Pomeroy, for example, called us after she got a $20.50 ticket for driving her van on the toll road way back in September. Problem is she doesn’t even have a van. “And I don’t drive that toll road,” MacDonald-Pomeroy said. “I live in San Pedro and work in Anaheim--and that’s as far on the 91 as I go. It’s as far as I want to go. I don’t understand any of this.”

MacDonald-Pomeroy says the whole experience has left her a bit shaken. It’s not so much the money, she says, but the idea that a computer would spit out her name for no apparent reason. “It’s a Big Brother type of thing. I don’t know how my name got involved in this or whose computer I’m in.”

If you have a problem with toll road tickets, you can call (800) 600-9191 or drop us a note. But for you would-be scofflaws out there, don’t think you can use these lapses to dodge a righteous ticket: Video cameras are set up to capture the license plate numbers of violators. We’re sure that will ease MacDonald-Pomeroy’s worries about Big Brother.

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GRRRRRRR: If toll road tickets or tailgaters have you clenching the steering wheel in a white-knuckle grip, you might want to take a deep breath, count to 10 and set aside this Saturday morning for a special anti-road rage seminar in La Habra.

The free event will feature a psychologist from College Hospital of Cerritos and officers from the California Highway Patrol and La Habra police. Part of the agenda is reserved for audience members to “share roadway frustrations and learn constructive ways to deter violence.” And, if you’re still mad after that, free coffee and doughnuts will be served.

Road rage is, of course, a serious matter on Southern California’s packed freeways. Just last month a driver on the Riverside Freeway was wounded by an air pellet after she and another driver cut each other off. A national study tracked a 51% increase in anger-related crashes during the first five years of this decade. In the vast majority of cases, the raging driver was a male ages 18 to 26, and in one-third of 10,000 crashes the angry motorist used a car as a weapon.

How common is road rage? No one can say since so many instances go unreported. But federal officials estimate that two-thirds of the 42,000 highway deaths nationwide in 1996 were caused by aggressive driving, a broad category that includes speeding, running red lights and, on the extreme end of the spectrum, road rage tantrums.

The Saturday seminar is at 10 a.m. at the La Habra United Methodist Church at 631 N. Euclid St. For details, call Marilyn Morin at (562) 691-1889. And if you’re running late, promise us you won’t get upset.