Road Hazard

Many people join the Automobile Club of Southern California and similar clubs for help when batteries die or tires go flat. A group of women now is asking whether the club’s practices offer protection against a more serious menace. Because a young woman was raped at gunpoint while waiting outside her car for a tow truck, the group is insisting that the club give its emergency-road service dispatchers better training. It should be done.

In the incident in question, the woman, who was 18 at the time and has since sued the Auto Club, was driving on Wilshire Boulevard when her car broke down. She called the club and, she says, was told to wait near the phone booth, not in her car with the doors locked, as her mother had counseled over the years. While she waited, a man with a gun abducted her and raped her.

The Auto Club, which has 3.4 million members, provides such a vital service to Southern Californians that it has an aura of public service even though it is a private organization. Although the details of the young woman’s case are at issue in the lawsuit, many local women were stunned when Judy Miller, a local public relations executive, told her daughter’s story; some recalled similar instructions and arguments with dispatchers. Nearly 50 prominent women then formally asked the club to train its operators in better safety procedures.

“Clearly, your own title of emergency road service establishes that you already know that an emergency exists when a call comes in,” said their letter, read at the club’s recent annual meeting. “And yet, women have been told to wait outside at phone booths and on street corners late at night, placing them at considerable risk, simply to make it convenient for the tow-truck driver.” Among the signers were Los Angeles City Council member Joy Picus; L.A. County Transportation Commission member Christine Reed; Kathleen Brown, Board of Public Works commissioner; Barbara Johnson and Andrea S. Ordin of the state attorney general’s office; former Los Angeles Police Commission member Reva Tooley, and Fire Commission member Ann Reiss Lane.

In response, the Auto Club says that if a club member expresses concern about his or her safety, the call generally is given priority. After receiving the women’s letter, the club has reviewed its training for emergency road-service employees and told its managers to reinforce with those workers the issue of safety of members--men and women, the elderly and the disabled. The club must make certain that that important message makes its way through to its emergency service crews.