Living in Los Angeles is dangerous to your health. It's not just from the widespread smog or even from the sun that threatens to shrivel up the skin like a dead prune and produce melenoma. The danger comes from something far more insidious, something far more rampant. The people.
Enormously stupid people. This is a city where such people take to the roadways, oblivious to everything around them and drive, drive, drive.
As long as these people are in their own cars, they have no awareness of other people (in cars, walking, biking, riding horses, whatever. It doesn't matter).
I live in a town in Los Angeles where horseback riding is common. Sometimes you have to walk on the side of the street to get where you need to go, like the hills for trail riding. I've had cars come within a few inches of me and my horse at high speed.
English: Bunker Hill in downtown Los Angeles as se...
Los Angeles and Griffith Observatory, as viewed fr...
English: Downtown Los Angeles as seen from my Amer...I've even had one lady in a huge van head straight for me as I waved frantically for her to move away. It's all I could do since I was up against a thick row of hedges on my left and had no where to go. These drivers apparently have no conception of the need for safe distance. If a horse becomes frightened, he might choose to leap into the street. Those drivers seem to want to force the issue. I think they're actually trying to cause an accident for the fun of it. It's easier for me to believe that these are vicious people rather than that they can be so enormously stupid.
Then there are the idiots who think yelling out the window at me or blowing their horn right into my horse's ears is something cool and not the least bit dangerous.
The other day...