Driving

It is possible to get around LA without a car; there is an extensive bus network, an adorable little metro system and even an increasing number of bicycle routes/dedicated lanes.  But who are we kidding?  Los Angeles is a car town; it's big, very spread out and most of the time really hot.  Sure, you can eschew owning a vehicle, tuck yourself away in one corner, living near your workplace, a short walk from the supermarket and the local coffee shop - and indeed your corner might be perfectly lovely and satisfy your every need, in which case congratulations! - but you're effectively cutting yourself off from the rest of LA where there are lots of other lovely spots in between the freeways which twist and swoop and tangle around each other like horny concrete snakes.  The reality for most of us is we will have to get our hands on a car and learn how to drive, LA-style. 

For Aussies (and Kiwis, Brits, Irish and assorted other - mostly Pacific Island - nations) that means learning how to drive on the right/wrong side of the road.  This will mess with your head a bit, but it's amazing how quickly you adapt.  Watch out for those left and right turns, though.  And roundabouts - although they don't seem to exist in Southern California.  Once right-side driving becomes second nature, you'll start to notice how badly Angelenos drive.  For a start, nobody uses their indicators.  And if by random chance they do, they fail to notice if it doesn't switch off automatically and continue merrily blinking away for miles.  I've seen a car on the freeway, left indicator blinking, change into the right-hand lane.  Brilliant.  Especially on a busy freeway.  And watch out if it rains; this glorious gift of mother nature is received so rarely in LA that it completely freaks drivers out when it happens.  Suddenly they are slow and hesitant and startle more easily. 

The other thing that freaks LA drivers out is pedestrians.  Before I started driving - and was therefore more often a pedestrian - I marvelled at how promptly cars would stop if I looked like I was going to step out onto the road.  Was this due to my preternatural beauty, I wondered?  When I sat for my Californian driver's license, I learned that yielding to pedestrians is absolutely drummed into drivers.  Very sensible, and in principle no different to any other country I'm sure.  But it has engendered a kind of stupid pedestrian.  In most busy cities, where public transport is more efficient and city planning encourages pedestrian traffic, the average man on the street knows how to cross it with his eyes open, aware of moving vehicles and able to time his passage safely with minimal disruption to traffic flow.  Not so in LA.  Pedestrians here walk around in a child-like bubble, seemingly unaware - or cockily unmindful - of the cars around them.  You will most often encounter these blessed fools in parking lots, meandering through at a snail's pace, stopping to have a conversation in the middle of a lane, then abandoning their shopping cart just wherever (two wheels hitched up on a nature strip, or gently rolling into the next parking bay).  So in the end you can't blame drivers for being freaked out by pedestrians.

One last broad generalisation about LA drivers: they can't park.  I blame two things.  No, three.  Firstly, it is not a requirement when you sit your driver's test to execute a reverse parking manoeuvre.  If you don't need it to pass the test, you don't learn it, right?  Secondly, the cars are so flipping huge it's like trying to park a shed.  Thirdly, the preponderance of valet parking means in many cases you can get away with not parking your vehicle at all; just pull up, hand over the keys and make sure you have a few extra bills for the tip when you collect it.

If you've been driving without incident in your home town, navigating highways, freeways and one-way streets, and reversing nimbly into narrow parking spots, you'll do just fine in LA.