On Freeways, Some Drivers’ Brains Just Don’t Accelerate

The first things he saw were the legs. Protruding from under the partially opened hood of a car going 45 mph, the dangling pair of limbs alerted Officer Don Dugan to the fact that something was terribly wrong on the Santa Ana Freeway.

“My eyes just got buggy,” Dugan recalled.

But the driver had an explanation. Not to worry, he explained: His accelerator cable had snapped and, being a resourceful man, he had persuaded his wife to ride up front under the hood and operate it manually for the rest of the trip.

“I cited them for stupidity,” Dugan said.

California Highway Patrol officers say they witness innumerable acts of stupidity and carelessness on the freeways of Orange County by drivers intent on almost everything but their driving. Officers have, for instance, seen people barreling down the freeway while changing baby diapers, changing their clothes or reading newspapers spread across their steering wheels.

“It’s just crazy the things that people do,” CHP Officer Joe Escobar said. “People do some weird, weird things.”

Three years ago, as part of a traffic safety campaign, the California Office of Traffic Safety compiled a list of dangerous driving behaviors observed on California highways. Among them: eating a baked potato while driving 55 mph, cutting children’s hair, eating a can of chili with both hands, brushing teeth while rinsing with a cup of water, grooming a pet, putting on mascara, typing on a laptop computer, nursing a baby, using a curling iron, reading a book and removing pantyhose.

CHP officers assigned to Orange County say that they can add to the list.

Once, for instance, Officer Sandra Hartman stopped a car for weaving all over the road. Thinking that she had a possible drunk driver on her hands, she approached the car cautiously, only to find something else entirely: the driver and a passenger, both deaf, engaged in an animated conversation using sign language.

Another time, the driver of a Volkswagen bug was found to have packed his car with more than 900 phone books. The man, a phone book deliverer who was paid according to the number of copies delivered, had even removed the seats from his car and was literally sitting on phone books.

“All I could see was phone books,” Officer Gary Alfonzo recalls. “My question was, how did he intend to drive the vehicle going the other direction once he had delivered the phone books and had no seats?

“He said he hadn’t thought of that.”

Another man explained to Officer Kevin Scord that his seat belt was unfastened because he had wanted to smell his foot.

“He said he was hot and smelly,” Scord said.

Then there are the romantics.

Officer Carol Kelly recalls stopping two cars after watching a young man swerve dangerously as he tried to pass a note through his passenger window to the young woman driving in the next lane. Apparently the two had begun flirting on the freeway, Kelly said, and had decided to exchange phone numbers.

“He tried to yell it to her, but she couldn’t hear it,” Kelly said. “I cited them both for traveling at an unsafe speed.”

Another young driver actually tried a similar stunt with Officer Hartman.

“He started smiling and waving at me like he was flirting,” she remembers. “Then he slammed into a car.”

“I didn’t cite him,” she said. “I figured he’d been humiliated enough.”

Street Smart appears Mondays in The Times Orange County Edition. Readers are invited to submit comments and questions about traffic, commuting and what makes it difficult to get around in Orange County. Include simple sketches if helpful. Letters may be published in upcoming columns. Please write to David Haldane, c/o Street Smart, The Times Orange County Edition, P.O. Box 2008, Costa Mesa, CA 92626, send faxes to (714) 966-7711 or e-mail him at David.Haldane@latimes.com Include your full name, address and day and evening phone numbers. Letters may be edited, and no anonymous letters will be accepted.