Finding a simple theme with which to start our comparisons, between Europe and the USA on this blog, has not been as easy as I initially thought: “Even the longest march starts with a single step…” – yes, I know, I know… but it is another analogy that comes to mind: once, when lost in the south of Dublin, I asked an old local man for directions. After a pause, he replied cautiously, “Well, I wouldn’t start from here”.
That’s how I feel about this blog, I’m still looking for a “proper” starting point – but it ain’t gonna happen, so let’s just go…
Driving – you can easily spot a European driver on the back roads of Los Angeles. They make clean, crisp manouevres, accelerate and decelerate rapidly, keep to the inside lanes and overtake on the outside. I’m not claiming they are better or safer drivers but there is major culture clash when you compare with driving styles of the locals: slow to move off from a stop, weaving between lanes without indicating, very difficult to ‘read’, to understand and anticipate their next moves.
Driving in Los Angeles is not (just) about getting from A to B. Whether it is the hellish commute to and from downtown if that’s where you work; a trip down to the ‘local’ shopping mall (more about different ideas of ‘local’ in another post); or a 10-hour drive to friends or family elsewhere in the state or beyond, driving is a leisure pursuit. It’s about enjoying the trip, driving in comfort and feeling at home, almost literally.
It still shocks me, whilst evincing nothing more than a raised eyebrow to a local, to look over in traffic and see drivers (and I mean drivers in moving traffic, not ‘passengers’ – themselves a rarity – more on that too…): on the phone (common), drinking coffee (common), texting, reading a newspaper, even watching videos on their cherished iPads (all scarily above statistically insignificant).
In Europe any of these would be deadly and here the authorities are certainly stern with anyone caught transgressing but it seems to matter less because everyone drives so slowly, badly and cautiously, that the chances of disaster are much reduced. A young woman busy texting misses a junction, crosses four lanes of cross traffic on a red light and narrowly misses a crash barrier? Sure, it happens, get over it – everyone sees it coming and gives way. The alternative is to ‘get involved’, a crime in itself.
In Europe, I’d probably be minded to teach the idiot a lesson and let her crash into me and have fun seeing her lose her license and pay through the nose for insurance costs and future premiums. It just doesn’t happen like that here. Not only is it generally a risk-averse culture but you just don’t know what or who you are up against: money (and there is a lot of it in L.A.) buys good lawyers; and good lawyers get things moving in your favour. You never know if it’s a poor airhead or Paris Hilton (OK, or both, there’s probably a fair Venn overlap there) behind the wheel in front so better to avoid confrontation at all costs.Never mind that they might be ‘packing’ and in a mean, ugly, mood and looking for a smarmy bloody Englishman upon whom to vent their spleen….
In Europe, driving is just something you put up with, in order to get from A to B. Here, from coffee cup holders, decent in-car entertainment, good sound insulation from the outside world, soft suspension to handle the dreadful state of the roads (yes, I’ll have to write about infrastructure shocks too..), the ubiquitous automatic transmission (one foot driving, lazy start and stop adding to the languid approach), cruise control (no feet and half a hand driving), to the latest technology – automatic lane keeping assist “for those moments when you nod off or lose concentration”, I kid not – everything is designed for you to think of your car as your home from home. It’s meant to be fun, it is about the journey. People move seamlessly from home to car to office to car to lunch to car to office to car to market to car to home. It is possible to pass days, weeks, of your life without being touched by the real world. The last thing you want is for the real world to impinge on your journey, because ever-so-slightly worse than having to deal with the LAPD (who have probably heard and seen it all, so their famous cynicism and short temper are certainly understandable if not also justified) would be to have the hassle of dealing with insurance brokers, lawyers and court hearings following a prang. So avoid at all costs.
And….well, confession time. Like the new AA member, I have to confess “My name’s Peter and I don’t drive a car”. Admitting that you have a problem is said to be the first step to recovery but I’ve been very lucky in not having had to face my “problem”, living in a sweet spot between good residential area, lots of shops and biking distance from the beach, has meant that I’ve been able to survive, even enjoy for goodness sakes, living here without a car. In a city where there are more cars than people, it puts me somewhere in amongst very marginal minority groups of the desperately poor, slightly batty, idiosyncratic or English ex-patriots (Choose one). The geo-social reality is that without a car in LA, you are very limited in mobility. The low-rise urban sprawl here has no parallel in Europe and, together with a below-par public transport infrastructure, means that getting around outside your ‘local’ neighbourhood is a big deal without wheels…
Brown in the USA 