The California Girl

Author: Megan Michelson Features Editor

A friend of mine recently suffered the consequences of a pricey traffic violation in downtown Middlebury. He failed to make a complete stop at the stop sign coming onto College Street from the Johnson parking lot and as result was pulled over by the police and forced to pay a $170 ticket. Although stopping at those obvious red octagonal signs, clearly indicated with the letters S-T-O-P, is a national law, I couldn't help but recall the many times I had committed a similar offense in my home state of California and not been harmed by law enforcement in any way. As a matter of fact, the very act of gliding through stop signs with simply a light tap on the breaks is coined "a California stop" after the very mannerisms of California drivers.

Most Californians are forced to own cars, even if living in a populated urban environment, due to the less than adequate public transportation in the state. The San Francisco Bay Area has BART, a moderate above and below ground transportation system that isn't used to its full capacity by residents of the city and surrounding area. Los Angeles installed a subway system more recently, which is rarely used because most people would rather show off their expensive vehicles than be seen in a public train.

Drivers in the Golden State are known for their impatience when it comes to arriving at their destinations in a timely fashion regardless of the many driving laws they're forced to break along the way. They rarely ever use turn signals to indicate a lane change because of pure laziness or the time consuming nature of tapping the turn signal wand. If they do decide to actually use their blinkers, they tend to stay on for miles after the announced turn or lane change due to the drivers' incessant cell phone conversations. This irksome blinking light tends to annoy the drivers tailing (typically a closer than comfortable distance) behind, which often ignites a fiery case of road rage.

It's obvious that Californians are not the most patient, conservative drivers in the country. Compared with the drivers along the Vermont country roads and two-lane highways, the drivers on California's many multi-lane freeways are aggressive, speedy and uncontrollable. In Vermont, drivers are relaxed and do not let hostility dominate on the road. A Vermonter will see a yellow light as an indication to slow down in preparation for the upcoming red light, whereas a Californian interprets a yellow light as a sign to accelerate to make it through before the light turns red. Highway patrol in California has actually been forced to install hidden cameras on top of stoplights in certain cities in order to apprehend the increasing number of red light runners.

Although a law analogous to the one in Vermont, stating that vehicles must stop for pedestrians in cross walks, exists in my home state, drivers in California rarely abide by this. When crossing the street in Middlebury, it is almost guaranteed that an approaching car will stop for a student, unless the car has a New York license plate. However, in California, drivers are in too much of a rush to take the time to allow people to cross the street, even though the law requires them to do so.

Without the winding roads and circuitous roundabouts like the one in downtown Middlebury, California drivers are usually designated to major interstates and forced to undergo stop and go traffic. One plus of the California road system is that there are fewer tolls or thruway fees than on the East Coast, but this is at the expense of our gas taxes being some of the highest in the country.

Gas stations in California are mostly self service and often are pre-pay, as opposed to the stations in Vermont that often ask drivers to pump first and pay later. I think this is a result of the trusty and honest nature of Vermonters, whereas Californians apparently are more susceptible to screeching out of gas stations without paying their often lofty price for a gas fill-up.

The 15,000 miles of California's state highway system is operated and maintained by a state-regulated department called Caltrans. The Caltrans employees are easily identified as those working roadside late into the night in their florescent orange vests.

Until relocating to Vermont, I had always assumed that the term Caltrans was synonymous with road workers nationwide, and it wasn't until I spotted Vermont's version, Vtrans, that I realized I was wrong. Vtrans is responsible, among other things, for the upkeep of Vermont's mere 2,370 miles of state highways.

In addition to driving techniques and road workers, the types of cars driven in California differ substantially from those in Vermont. California's vehicle motto seems to be something along the lines of "the bigger, the better." Sport utility vehicles are frequently owned by city dwellers for their weekend ski trips to the mountains. These drivers assume that being behind the wheels of such large, four-wheel drive vehicles can compensate for their lack of snow and ice driving abilities.

In Vermont, where frost heaves permeate roadways during the winter months, drivers are forced to acquire actual winter driving skills as opposed to just owning big cars.

My final advice to my friend who, although he attempted to loop through legal loopholes, sadly was unable to avoid paying his stop sign ticket, is to go to California where drivers seem to be able to commit innumerable amounts of traffic violations with few repercussions.