Driving Home a Message of Pedestrian Safety

Her car was bright orange. Tracy Metro’s face was bright red.

“Oh my gosh! I just made an illegal turn! Great,” moaned the Westside’s newly designated official safe driver.

Metro has been recruited to spend the next two months driving on Los Angeles’ most congested streets in a car wrapped in orange-colored advertising that promotes pedestrian and motorist safety.

Her meanderings are part of a $396,000 educational campaign called “Walkable Westside” that aims to reduce accidents involving motorists and pedestrians in Beverly Hills, Culver City, Santa Monica and West Hollywood.

Simply driving through the four cities can be tough enough, given that gawking tourists and other distracted visitors share crowded roadways with impatient locals hurrying to get through gridlock and on to work or home.

But doing it in a car plastered with vinyl shrink-wrapped safety slogans makes for an especially stressful commute, Metro is discovering.

“Everybody’s looking at me. People stare, trying to figure out what it is,” Metro said of the “Be Aware . . . They’re Out There” message and the depictions of orange-colored jaywalkers covering her 1998 Land Rover. “If I commit a moving violation, everybody is going to know it.”

No police officer was around to see Metro bust the no-right-turn-on-red sign on 4th Street in Santa Monica this week when she took an observer for a spin through the four sponsoring cities.

That’s a good thing. Metro needs a clean driving record. Organizers of the “Walkable Westside” program insisted on that.

Metro--a 20-something television and voice-over actress from West Hollywood--says she has received only one traffic ticket in her life. “I was going 15 miles an hour over the limit on Laurel Canyon. That was two years ago. I went to online traffic school to take care of it.”

Her new job as a street-level safety advocate is turning into something of an education itself.

“I notice people flagrantly violating the law, like these two,” Metro said, slamming on her brakes at the corner of Main and Hill streets in Santa Monica. A couple casually sipping from coffee cups stepped in front of her, ignoring the pedestrian-crossing signal.

“Hey, the hand is flashing red!” Metro muttered as the couple sauntered obliviously on. “You’re not supposed to walk now. Hello!”

In West Hollywood, Metro made a point of stopping well outside the crosswalk at Santa Monica Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue as the traffic signal started to change. A gray pickup truck in the lane next to her accelerated and blasted through the intersection, however.

“I used to always go through yellow lights too,” Metro said. “Now I don’t.”

Beverly Hills’ traffic was kinder as she steered her orange car onto Rodeo Drive. Motorists politely signaled when turning. And there wasn’t a jaywalker in sight on the famed shopping street.

“The only violation I see is that woman over there wearing white shoes after Labor Day,” Metro joked.

The “Walkable Westside” effort was launched in May in response to increased pedestrian deaths--including two Russian immigrants killed last year as they crossed a Santa Monica street and were hit by a Pacific Palisades lawyer allegedly talking on her cell phone.

Metro estimates she drives about 300 miles a week traveling to auditions and studio assignments. Three other drivers whose daily routines also include extensive commutes through the Westside have also been picked to cover their personal cars with orange wrappers through November. The drivers will each be paid $300 a month. In the meantime, the campaign is expanding to billboards, bus and radio advertising, and is deploying mimes dressed in orange Lycra jumpsuits.

Orange-suited Adam Gersh, a 31-year-old film actor from Sherman Oaks, said he started out by demonstrating safety tips along busy streets such as Wilshire Boulevard.

“But I was a distraction to drivers. They’d honk and yell, ‘Hey, Orange Man!’ It was counterproductive. I brought it up to my boss,” Gersh said. Now the mimes will skip the streets and perform at public events.

Metro predicted that the safety campaign will provoke less head-scratching as its visibility increases. But for now, people often ask what movie her car is advertising.

As if on cue, a passerby stopped with a question. “Is this going to be a bond issue or something?” wondered Santa Monica legal secretary Terry Gardner.

“See what an orange car does?” said Metro.

How could you miss it?

‘If I commit a moving violation, everybody is going to know it.’