Socal is actually having some decent rain for once over the next couple days. Only downside is most people forget how to drive

Yep!

I remember that

Yup. Austins stuff worked good because if you ever watch him post retirement he isn't much different, just more "lawsuit restrained" like the rest of us.

I listen to his podcast all the time. He's still really funny

Where I'm at drivers are very inconsiderate, the "slow traffic keep right" rule means nothing, texting while driving, general unawareness of anything around them...etc. it's almost like driving is a secondary task to what people are doing, they aren't driving, they are ALSO driving...

Red lights and stops signs are little more than suggestions to most people around here as well

I'll let the typo slide ;-)

Oops lol

I personally hear think that most of them get their drivers licenses from cracker jack boxes, and when the streets are wet forget it.
Lol
Only upvotes! :)

You do havr to go through some hoops to get a license in CA, but not many. You need a certain number of hours with a driving school and that sort of thing. Problem is, that after getting a license at 16 there's not really any other accountability. I just renewed mine over the internet; it wasn't anymore difficult than paying registration

To me it always revolves around how much the city can make, not safety to the residents or visitors. But I understand what you're saying about getting and keeping a license here. By them having you do as much as you can over the internet, they're cutting out customer service costs. I do agree there needs to be more accountability, just look at that guy who ran over all those people at the farmers market trying to get away from another driving incident.

Unfortunately, it's more convenient doing it online; going to the DMV office can be an all day affair even with an appointment. We should have a driving test every few years or so just to be sure we still know what we're doing. At least once a month there's a story on the news about somebody crashing through a store front and it's usually a confused elderly driver who thought the gas was the brake

I'd probably be more concerned about how many alcohol permits they put out within your city, because the more of those they put out equals the more people drinking and driving in my opinion. My city hands them out downtown as though they are candy.
I agree that people should have to take a driving test every few years, but the question there would be does the DMV have enough employees to do that? I'd say probably not, knowing as you going to the DMV can be an all day affair, which would bring us back to the issue of customer service, and why they make doing it online so much easier.

Alcohol sales don't seem to be too out of control around here to me. There are only a few bars outside of the party areas, plus the usual crop of liquor stores and grocery stores. Overall, we aren't really inundated with places to buy booze

You're lucky. Here it seems that almost every new restaurant downtown is now opened with an alcohol license. As well as it seeming that more new restaurants is the majority being allowed to open downtown.

New restaurants pop up around here and there with liquor licenses, but it's not bad. Not a ton of new clubs downtown, but I don't spend a lot of time downtown outside of work

You're lucky. Where I live in the past years they've refused to let any clubs open downtown. And really it's mostly over priced restaurants that open down here, an example would be the council recently said that if you are a restaurant with over 100 other restaurants nationally now you can not open on the Promenade. Although if you are already in operation you're grandfathered in, due to it really being done trying to prohibit fast food restaurants from opening there.

But if you say the area is for everyone that visits the city, yet you price food in the area at a price not everyone can afford, what does that say? I personally think all the new high priced restaurants are for the business people in the area, because a lot of these new restaurants seem to be busiest during lunch.

I actually remember we were pulled over by this cop once who told us about how he used to teach driver's ed in Cali and we were like, um, buddy, have you seen the way people drive here, you might wanna reconsider categorizing that as an accomplishment.

Which could also be part of the problem

Is this a downtown area you're talking about and do you live where the convention business is heavy

No it is a downtown area of a city just over eight miles large. We get film festivals once in a while, but the city relies maybe a little too much on tourism. Which means everything's about the image projected and not necessarily reality. I go to the city council meetings and try to unwind the spin the city council is trying to sell, and for the life of me I can't figure out what jobs our city manager does. Besides repeating well scripted stuff.

I agree cities rely on tourism, but the point I was trying to make is the city manager and the city council are luring visitors here under false pretenses. Saying how great and safe this city is, when in reality in the last two years crime and homelessness have increased expeditiously.
As well as questionable actions by the city council themselves, such as fighting the California Voting Rights Act, loosing in court at a large sum of money about ten million dollars the residents believe it now is which they are taking from the taxpayers. When the case from the beginning is a conflict of interest for them. In other words they just raised our water rates again, but why would they need to be doing that if they weren't wasting taxpayer funds?

It's all about perception..if they can bring people in, that's all they care about. The money rarely goes anywhere but back in the pockets of the people in power. I think that's one of the reasons why Prop 6 failed, at least around here. Once we starter paying that extra gas tax, road repair work started cropping up all over the place

It's so funny that you mentioned the gas tax, in our city those funds are being used to paint bike lanes. not repair roads. So I do agree that most local governments in this state are corrupt, just look at Bell. And on the subject of the money going into the pockets of the people in power an incumbent in the last election who we voted out was only running for the stipend and travel expenses.

I guess local governments can use that money however they want? That's kind of sad. You said 94 earthquake, are you in or around Northridge? I still remember that; with the roofs (sp?) collapsing and all that. I'm sure there arw still roads out there that haven't been repaired completely in the last 24 years. The corruption in our government is ridiculous and most people don't seem to care. Where I live, not only was a guy who's been in congress since 2001 re-elected, but he got his seat after his father retired and he had been in office longer than I can remember. Not to mention thant he was indicted for using tax payer money to go on vacation. It's time for new people in congress. Unfortunately, most people don't seem to share the same opinion because I keep voting against these sort of people yet they keep getting re-elected

For the '94 earthquake I wasn't in Northridge, but used to know a person who lived in the building that fell there. My area did get a good hit though, there was a church four or five blocks from where I lived that fell into it's basement, and one block from there a fault split the floor in a store. I lived in an older building at that time which was also originally red tagged. So I still remember it too. Corruption in government does seem to be the phrase these days. Like taking money for the '94 earthquake, sitting on it, and building a park out of it. Or (this is one of my favorite) taking out a fifty million dollar loan on the pretense of restoring the civic center, but then taking the money and demolishing and rebuilding a parking structure. Oh and the new thing that they seem to be doing is taking million of dollars for as needed contracts with no specification as to what it was to be used for or how much it would cost. Here we did better in this last election. We voted out an incumbent, voted for term limits and for major development projects to need a 5-2 vote. And if the city keeps fighting district voting which they lost their case within a week of the last election, the idea is floating around to recall them all. My community has also done a successful referendum on a development project. I hope you can see I understand what you are saying.

I wish the voters in my area would be smart enough to do that. I'm getting tired of seeing the same people in office all the time. Based on what you're saying, I think I shoukd be even more happy to see that gas tax money actually being put to use. Every once in a while the people around here make good voting decisions. There was a measure to turn the stadium here and the area around it to a new stadium and park all dedicated to soccer; that was defeated in favor of giving the local university a chance to expand a little

I don't know if I'd wish for it too hard. The incumbent that was voted out of office cost the resident taxpayers a million dollars in settlement costs for leaning on the city manager to fire an assistant city manager before she was able to start for campaigning against her in previous elections. And your lucky that your area is using the gas tax to repair the roads, instead of to finish projects they've received grant funding for and haven't completed in the time period the grant funding is for. And by the fact that the residents had to do a referendum on a development project after almost two hundred people got up to speak about it, mostly against it, shows that our city council doesn't listen to us. You're lucky that your's does.

I live in socal and I watched while it was raining a driver went 100 on a highway and crashing into an....... ambulance!

It's not just the drivers that are bad, California seems to fail altogether when it come to traffic safety. My mom rear ended someone who had to slam their brakes because a pedestrian ran out into the intersection when they didn't have right of way. At the same time a bus was pressing in from picking people up at a stop and the driver didn't seem to care that there was another car in the way and they could've mowed us down. Sadly the pedestrian took off and there were no traffic cams (which is stupid in a place like California).
Stop signs also just seem to just be suggestions here too because my mom got honked at once for, gasp, actually stopping at a stop sign. And once when we were crossing the street at a crosswalk, rather than actually stopping the driver just slowly coasted through the sign and could've hit us.
These reasons and more are why I laugh whenever I see a sign that talks about the rules of the road being strictly enforced in California.

You aren't far off there.
I've been saying the same thing for years about stop signs, also right turns on red. I think I'm the only person I know who actually stops. And, yes, I've been waived through and honked at several times. I live near a corner and in my neighborhood people blow through the stop sign all the time, many people got upwards of 40mph up my street.
The rain only compounds things.
I actually posted a Scumbag Steve the other day based on somebody I almost hit who ran a stoo sign that was crossing a freeway onramp...
I could go on....