Readers React: Slick roads, invisible lane stripes: the hazards of driving in the rain

To the editor: Conor Friedersdorf makes some good points about rainy-day driving. Having driven for half a century, I’ve noticed a couple of things worth passing on that Friedersdorf does not mention. (“When it rains, L.A.’s drivers lose all common sense,” Opinion, Jan. 11)

One is that after a long dry period, oil collects on the road, making driving during the first rain especially hazardous. Motorists are more likely to lose traction on the road.

Also, wherever lane stripes are not delineated with reflectors, they become virtually impossible to see and follow at night when headlights are reflecting off the wet road.

Finally, the brakes in many cars today grab when they get wet. You can’t count on your brakes to function like they do in dry weather.

We’ve grown unused to rainy weather, so it’s good to have a column like Friedersdorf’s to remind us to adjust before we need to call the insurance company’s adjuster.

Bill Seckler, Corona

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To the editor: Some of these speeders rationalize away their irresponsible driving by “knowing” God is lovingly with them and looking over their lives. Guess the lives of those people whom they kill, maim and injure don’t have a loving God watching over them, leaving the rest of us to be the potential victims of those who choose to drive dangerously when it rains.

A solution to bad driving in the rain isn’t new laws like reduced speed limits. Rather, there should be heavy financial penalties for speeding on wet pavement, whether it be caused by snow, rain, broken water mains, overflowing streams and so on.

Tripling fines would bring a lot of sanity to the minds of drivers who speed at will.

Bob Aronoff, South Pasadena

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