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Red Light, Green Light

Here’s the thing: I hate driving. I hate it with a fiery, burning passion unlike any fiery, burning passion ever seen before by man. I hate it so much that part of the temptation to not move to the center of the film industry is the fact that their public transportation is so piss-poor, and the layout so spread out, so I’d be driving everywhere. Of course, this was negated by the fact that I lived in the suburbs and had to drive everywhere anyway because of the sprawl and the lack of public transportation…

Since I hate driving so much, I have one rule with a corollary: get to where I’m going as fast as humanly possible, without getting caught by Johnny Law. One time I was caught by Johnny Law, and I was a little fucking annoyed by it, because, okay, I guess speeding is bad for the safety of the people driving in the vehicle, and if I had gone around a 35mph bend at 50mph, maybe there would have been a car around said bend that I would have slammed into. These things are bad, but it was in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere in Iowa. Fuckin’ Iowa.

So yeah, I’ll flagrantly defy speed laws, traffic signs and signals, and so and so forth, as long as I’m absolutely 100% certain I won’t get caught. And as you gradually get used to driving the same route every day, you get to know where cops mill around, where they hide for speed traps, where the secret cameras of doom are, and so on and so forth.

Because I didn’t know much about the Los Angeles area, the driving habits of the people (three words: TOO FUCKING SLOW) or the way the cops handled traffic, I decided it’d be best to be on good behavior until these things became a bit clearer to me. But man, that’s easier said than done, because this place isn’t full of lovely rolling plains or beautiful architecture. There’s nothing to make me want to slow down, except the In-N-Out Burger, and so I went from “being good” to driving 10mph and running red lights.

I didn’t even usually drive much over the limit (unless I was on the expressway) back in Chicago, and it was very, very rare that I’d run a red light, and usually it was my stupid depth perception saying, “Oh sure, it’s yellow, you’ll make it.” And I finally hit the light 10 seconds after it’s turned red but don’t have the ability to slam on the brakes. Watch out, truck traffic!

Here, I just ran it. I had time to slow down, full fair warning — I just didn’t really want to sit and wait for the light, so I didn’t, and I was still annoyed from having to follow this fucking pickup going five under for several blocks. Maybe this was a bad decision. Maybe, if the light had one of those cameras, I’ll get a ticket mailed to me. I wishfully think that, because I was also going 10mph while running this red light, maybe my license plate will be blurry and/or out-of-frame, so they’ll never catch me. But, if nothing else, they’ll be mailing that ticket to my parents’ house in Illinois, so we can all admire how easy I’ll be able to ignore that.

I need some valerian root and a good woman.

Posted by Stan on April 30, 2005 10:14 AM  | Permalink | Random Musings | Digg It