The Roads of LA

Anything a traffic reporter needs to say in Los Angeles is: you're screwed. Don't even bother. Google maps should say the same thing to eager drivers seeking directions on their website. Any request in Los Angeles should put the website into self-destruct. Today I typed in my starting point and destination and Google maps said: total time: 12 minutes (35 in current traffic). Ha! Well, I wasn't laughing at the time.

The horrendous gridlock here is rated the worst in the nation for good reason, and can be attributed to multiple factors. Los Angeles drivers are among the worst in the nation, possibly the world (you could put them head to head with some European countries). To them, pedestrians equate to target practice and the horn is honked as a means of expressing any emotion, not solely to alert other drivers. This is typical driving behavior in normal weather. So, you can only imagine what happens when it starts to rain in a place where, let’s face it, it never rains. I don’t need to imagine it anymore (not as if I was previously, what a weird thing to imagine!) because I saw it firsthand.

Let me begin by relaying the humorous fact that there was a storm watch in place for Los Angeles this morning, provoked by what I consider a light sprinkle. Seattle natives would laugh in the faces of the Los Angelinos, the way that I do when they complain of humidity.

The way the already poor drivers of Los Angeles reacted to the gentle rainfall would have been comedic had I not been on the roads myself. To them, the celestial teardrops equated to massive, world-ending basketball-sized balls of hail. The forward motion on the highway slowed to a pace a snail could out-crawl (if you would say that snails crawl… maybe they slither? Slide? Glide?). This leads me to believe that they would all end up in a roadside ditch should they need to drive in *gasp* snow! Let’s hope it never comes to that.