Brookswords

A Close Call

As I've  noted in an earlier post, riding buses in LA can be dicey at times.  Today I was sitting at a bus stop in East LA, absorbed in an LA Times article, when a huge crashing sound pulled  my eyes off the newspaper and onto a nearby car that had just driven into a light pole, abut 20 feet from where I'd been sitting--I would have been a sitting (and reading) duck, had the car driven into me instead of the light pole.  I wasn't the one closest to danger actually; two women and a toddler standing nearby were actually closer.  Since, at the time of the accident, I had been lost in the fog of the newspaper, I had to ask them how the car managed to find itself hugging a light pole.  They said the driver--uninjured, I might add, as was the passenger--must have been drunk.

The two women said they were able to move back from the car as they saw what it was about to do.  They were nice enough not to ask why I'd been oblivious to the oncoming danger, just as I was embarrassed enough not to explain that I'd been absorbed in a article about...Paris Hilton's jail sentence.  Had that car been 20 feet to the right, well, what a way to go.

And Away We Go!

One of the buses I take in the morning is the 304, and I often feel like one of the bus riders in the movie Speed.  The 304 is a 'limited stops' line, and from where I board the bus, at Echo Park & Sunset, to Figueroa & Sunset, there are no stops.  The drivers on this line seem to be very intent on making that 1.2 mile stretch a straight shot, shooting through all the lights even if it means stretching out the concept of speeding up to make the yellow.  (Most of the time that's pretty easy, since they're speeding to begin with.)  One morning a driver miscalculated as he sped up to make the yellow--by the time it turned red, he was going too fast to to stop, so he just barreled on through.  Once we made it past the light, everyone broke out of their own little private Idahos & looked at each other in disbelief--and relief, since we made it through unscathed.  The Beach Boys sang 'She's real fine/my 409', and many mornings I think, 'I face death's door/on the 304'.  I wouldn't be surprised to see people crossing themselves before boarding this bus.

Oh, and I didn't mention that many times these speed demons are, at the same time, talking on their cell phones.  That, of course, always gives me pause--especially now after today's news that the recent crash involving New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine may have been caused by a text message on a Blackberry.  As recounted in today's Newsday:

A New Jersey police officer who was angrily e-mailing the state trooper driving Gov. Jon Corzine's SUV shortly before it crashed said he hoped the messages meant to confront the man having an affair with his wife didn't cause the wreck. State police investigators are trying to find out whether one of Det. Sgt. Michael Mathis' messages was seen by trooper Robert Rasinski just before the crash, possibly through the use of a BlackBerry, and whether it might have had an effect on Rasinski's state of mind.

Maybe the nickname for BlackBerry--CrackBerry--should be changed... to CrashBerry.