This Is What’s Wrong With What’s Happening In Los Angeles Right Now
It has everything and nothing to do with homelessness
When I first moved to Los Angeles in 2008, it was common for one car to make a left turn across the opposite lane of incoming traffic once the light turned red.
A few years passed and it became two cars effectively going through the red light to make that left turn.
Then, it became three.
Now — in 2023 — we’re up to four cars pretty much every single time.
Seems like an irrelevant thing to point out. And, in isolation, maybe it is. However, in conjunction with other seemingly irrelevant things it helps illustrate the culmination of an urban society disintegrating into one that’s decreasingly fun to be a part of.
When you walk in LA these days — and plenty of people do — you routinely encounter drivers at crosswalks and coming out of residential and commercial driveways looking to turn or enter the street before you pass. Of course, it’s your right as a pedestrian to take the crosswalk on green and pass on the sidewalk before a car exits off of a curb cut. But that doesn’t matter.
By my rough estimate, half of drivers lately make eye contact with you — or not — and either just go without…
