Before moving here, we heard a litany of reasons why we'd hate LA. The smog, the plastic people, the traffic... After living here 3+ years, the one thing I agree with is the traffic. It's ridiculous. The 101 is always congested. We've driven over it in the wee hours of a weeknight, only to see it backed up. Like I said - ridiculous. Thankfully, the fault seems to lie in quantity, not quality. Drivers here are no worse than the drivers I've seen in other cities.

Take, for example, the little old man I saw in an Ohio DMV. He was easily 80-years-old. I watched as he tottered up to the counter to take his visual exam. Here's pretty much how it went down:


DMV Employee (indicating)
Go ahead and press your forehead against the bar on this machine.

Little Old Man
Huh?

DMV Employee (louder)
I said, "Go ahead and press your forehead against the bar on this machine."

Little Old Man (cupping ear)
What?

DMV Employee (louder and pantomiming)
Press your forehead here!!"

Little Old Man
Oh, okay.

DMV Employee (practically shouting)
Read me the smallest line on the eye chart you can manage.

Little Old Man
"E"

DMV Employee
...
Can you read anything smaller?

Little Old Man
No.

DMV Employee
Okay.
Now we're going to test your peripheral vision. Do you see a flashing light?

Little Old Man (cupping ear)
What?

DMV Employee
DO YOU SEE A FLASHING LIGHT? LIKE, MAYBE TO YOUR LEFT? PERIPHERALLY??


The sad thing is, she ended up passing the guy. Damn near deaf and blind, and none-too-steady on his pins, yet he was still a licensed driver in the state of Ohio. I made sure I hustled my butt and got out of that office before he hit the road.

There must be an extraordinarily low bar for DMV excellence satisfaction. The BBC reported today of a woman in her late 60s who has failed the written portion of the test 771 times. If you worked in a DMV, would you even let someone take a test 771 times? The mind reels. I wouldn't make that many attempts at anything, much less something for which the 771 failures represented only the first half of the total goal. Think about her on the road practicing for the driving portion of the exam.

And then think about how driving in LA doesn't seem so bad...

Labels: misc, news