High Speed Car Chases

Woke up this morning to the "breaking news" of a high speed car chase in Orange County. The chase today was a particularly crazy one, a woman in a Scion box (whatever the heck the model is that looks like a box on wheels) was chased from Long Beach to Rancho Santa Margarita. This chase spanned several freeways and lasted over an hour and included her stopping dead in the toll lanes of the 91 freeway, her doing donuts in the median of the 241 toll freeway, her slowing the car down to a slow crawl and getting out while the car was still moving, her gesturing to the police out of her windows, her turning her car around and driving the wrong way on the 241 toll road, and her car finally being "pitted" and swarmed by several CHP cars.

Car chases are considered high entertainment here. What I fail to get is what makes people think they are going to outrun the police, especially in a Scion box? Even if she could have outran the police, they likely got her license plate numbers and could certainly radio ahead to more remote law enforcement units and eventually she would get caught. Is it the 15 minutes of fame? Seems kind of silly since neither her name nor her photo were included in the news coverage of the chase.

And isn't it against all the laws of physics for a Scion box to go over 100 mph?

Signage

One of the most frustrating aspect of living here in southern California is the signage here. Seriously. There are billboards on top of billboards lining all of the freeways here. Quite frankly the billboards are an eyesore. We are constantly inundated with superfluous information on needless signs everywhere.

The thing that frustrates me the most, however, is the lack of signage for important stuff like freeway entrances. Most of the main thoroughfare type roads here are 3 lanes going each way, and people are very resistant to letting others change lanes. It chaps my hide to no end to discover that a freeway entrance is going off to the left when I am in the right lane, and the only sign telling me that is 200 feet before the entrance. There are numerous instances of this type of thing, especially in Orange County.

And then there are signs that are just plain stupid. Like the two signs I encountered today on the 405. Well actually one of the signs was on the entrance ramp to the 405 south from Bristol Street. It was one of those diamond shaped caution signs, which read, "Landscape Ahead". Really, Landscape Ahead? I thought I was in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The second sign read, "Landscape Ends". This sign was located about 1/4 mile before the Jamboree Rd. exit. I guess if the landscape ended, I must have been driving a hovercraft.

Please, southern California, I am begging you, post fewer unnecessary signs, and post more signs that give useful information, and post them in more appropriate locations.