crash

Mulholland Drive

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Mulholland Drive between Coldwater Canyon to the west and Laurel Canyon to the right.

By M. Snarky

Story 20 of 52

A mecca for car and motorcycle enthusiasts, Mulholland Drive between Coldwater Canyon Avenue and Laurel Canyon Boulevard was a place to test your driving or motorcycle riding skills. It was also a place where death was always possible at every turn.

I have driven on this section of Mulholland drive more times than I can remember, sometimes as a driver or motorcycle rider, and sometimes as a passenger. It is an infamous 2.25 mile stretch of road for many reasons. It is a road where you might test out the new suspension mods you just installed on your car. It is a road where you might take your significant other to view the city lights from one of the many fantastic lookouts. However, this is an unforgiving stretch of road and if you make a mistake, you may find yourself plunging hundreds of feet down a steep hillside and you are not likely to survive.

Some of the turns even have names, like Deadman’s Turn, Carl’s Curve and Grandstands, all of which have proven to be fatal at one time or another over the decades. This is part of the allure of Mulholland Drive; to push the driving envelope and beat death by hitting every twisting turn as fast as possible. Or not.

At the bottom of the gully at Car’s Curve you can find cars from all of the decades piled up. It is rumored that this part of Mulholland Drive is haunted by the drivers who were killed there. I came close to crashing there a few times myself.

I almost crashed on Alan Flaata’s café style 1973 Yamaha RD350 on Dead Man’s Curve – a nasty, almost 90-degree turn. If you’re coming from Laurel Canyon Boulevard, it turns hard to the left and comes up right after about a one-eighth mile straight section where you can pick up a lot of speed…if you’re willing…and I was. I came into that turn going much too fast and as I was downshifting and braking hard and leaning hard and trying to pull the motorcycle hard to the left, the left side foot peg scraped the asphalt and almost high-sided me right over the edge of the curve and down into the canyon. I barely pulled it off. I also almost soiled my new 501’s.

When I thought I was a great driver in my late teens and early twenties – like all young men that age believe – I was always pushing the envelope on Mulholland Drive in whatever car I was driving, which translates into I was almost always crashing all of the time…but I got lucky and never did actually crash, although I came very close. This is why that road is so dangerous; you build up a false sense of world-class driving skills when you’re driving hard and don’t crash, and so you keep on pushing the limit. It is a vicious circle.

Here’s my list of all the spinout survivor cars that I almost crashed on that stretch of road:

  • 1973 BMW 2002 with a 4-speed manual transmission and a heavily modified engine with dual, side draft Weber carburetors, headers, and a lowered suspension kit with anti-sway bars and Koni shocks and springs, and flared fenders with fat Pirelli tires. A true Eurocar experience. This car belonged to Frenchman Robert Gabbay, one of my old European Motor Connection bosses.
  • 1978 Fiat X1/9, stock, with a 5-speed manual transmission. A lightweight mid-engine car that handled pretty good and was fun to drive. This was a European Motor Connection customer car that I had for the weekend.
  • 1982 Chevy Citation X-11 5-speed coupe, stock. This was mine. It had decent power and handled well, but the front-wheel-drive transverse transaxle drivetrain was a little heavy to steer.
  • 1976 Jensen Interceptor III, stock. Another European Motor Connection customer car that I thrashed a few times.
  • 1969 Chevy Chevelle Super Sport 396, this was my $400 beater car that I bought from Keith Doran. Primer gray, no heater, no AC, no frills – just a shell of its former self. Somewhere along the line, someone swapped out the 396 for a 350! What a knucklehead.

Out of all of these cars, the Chevelle was the dumbest car to race around on Mulholland Drive because it simply was not built for handling and was notorious for massive understeer and crappy braking. It also only had a 2-speed “Slip ‘n’ Slide” PowerGlide transmission. Ah, youthful exuberance!

Some of these spinouts happened during the day, and some happened at nighttime, which is a very different experience when you’re spinning out; one second you see the rocky face of the road cut, and the next second you see the oncoming traffic, and the next second you see the city lights. With sweaty palms and an adrenaline surge, you drive off as if nothing had happened.

Around the summer of 1979 or so, my crazy friend Mark Flaata, Alan Flaata’s older brother, borrowed his mom’s dark green fake wood paneled 1972 Chrysler Town and Country station wagon one night and picked me up. As we were driving up to Mulholland Drive from Coldwater Canyon, we smoked a little bit of weed and were blasting Led Zeppelin’s Whole Lotta Love on 95.5 KLOS. We were feeling alright, and when Mark turned left onto Mulholland Drive, he apparently started channeling Björn Waldegård, the 1979 World Rally champion, and opened up the 4-barrel carburetor on the 383 cubic inch engine and got that massive station wagon a little bit sideways. Mark drove like a maniac, sliding around the curves, and flooring it every chance he could. We were laughing our asses off as Mark was thrashing his mom’s poor car.

Up ahead, Mark saw a hitchhiker and decided to stop and give him a ride. I was thinking that picking up a hitchhiker on Mulholland Drive at night might be a really bad idea, but the guy from Reno turned out to be pretty cool and was trying to get to Hollywood and Vine. Mark said, “No problem; I’ll drive you there!” Then Mark drove off like a nut job, spinning his wheels in the dirt and speeding off and sliding around more turns. I looked back at the guy from Reno, and he looked like he wanted to barf or maybe jump out of the car. Well, as Mark sped into one of the unnamed right-hand curves near Laurel Pass Avenue, he lost control, and we slid sideways left off of the pavement and into the slightly bermed dirt hillside – almost rolling that gigantic mass of Detroit steel in the process – as it stalled and came to rest on top of a huge hard-packed mound of dirt.

Approximate crash site.

This is when the guy from Reno said, “Hey man, thanks for the ride, but I think I’ll walk the rest of the way.” Mark replied, “Don’t worry, dude, I’ll get you to Hollywood!” as he quickly restarted the Chrysler and tried to drive it off the mound of dirt that it found itself sitting on, but all that happened was spinning wheels – the massive, 4,735 lb., 121-inch-long wheelbase station wagon was stuck, looking something like a beached mechanical whale. We got out of the car to assess the situation. The frame of the station wagon was sitting on the crest of the hard-packed dirt mound and was practically teetering. We knew our only option was to bumper jack it up from the front until the back wheels were firmly touching the ground for traction, and then reverse it out as the car would, theoretically anyway, gracefully roll backwards off of the jack.

This is when we noticed that the man from Reno was gone; he had pulled off a proper Irish Goodbye and we never saw him again. Hopefully he got to Hollywood in one piece. I’m 100% sure Mark left an impression.

Being that the car was on a slight slope, it took a few attempts to get the bumper jack to stabilize using some strategically placed rocks, but it actually worked on the fist attempt. By the time we were done, we were covered in dust, dirt and sweat but remarkably, aside from the layer of dust and dirt also on the station wagon, it was unscathed: no dents, no scratches, no flat tires, no cracked windshield, proving once again that the car was pretty much invincible. In retrospect, it could have been a massively worse crash and we were lucky that we didn’t get hurt or killed.

There are many spots along that stretch of Mulholland Drive that you can pull off and park and watch the motorcycle riders and car enthusiasts – even the boneheaded ones that borrowed their mothers station wagon, ahem – test their mettle. On any given weekend, you’d see early and late model European cars like BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Jaguar, Alpha-Romeo, and my personal favorite, Porsche. Most of these cars looked original, but many of them were modified for road racing. Occasionally you would witness a spinout or someone driving off the asphalt and onto the soft dirt shoulder kicking up a huge cloud of dust.

Less crazy Alan Flaata had a heavily modified 1972 Ford Capri that he raced around on Mulholland Drive too, but Alan definitely had much better driving skills than Mark. I know this because I was a passenger in that car when he drove through Griffith Park as fast as he could on Mt Hollywood Drive, colloquially known as Trash Truck Hill. Alan spent many weekends wrenching on his beloved Capri road racer, and I think he spent most of the money he earned from working at Oroweat Bakery on aftermarket parts. Alan was an early adopter of the “Built not bought” movement. His friend Mauricio Zotto followed suit, but “Zotto” built a badass 1970 Boss 302 Mustang that he could pull a slight wheelie with that he raced on Van Nuys Boulevard in the heyday of Wednesday night cruising. But that’s another story.

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L.A. Drivers: You Suck!

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Story 4 of 52

By M. Snarky

I was born at L.A. County General Hospital and have lived around the Los Angeles area for almost my entire life, mostly in the San Fernando Valley. I took my written exam and driving test at the DMV office at the corner of Vanowen Street and Kester Avenue in Van Nuys when I turned eighteen way back in 1979. In other words, most of my driving experience is in the greater Los Angeles area, so I’m writing about this from firsthand experience.

Granted, I was guilty of doing all of the dumbass things that young new driver’s do like speeding, burnouts, racing on Mulholland Drive, and pulling a Rockford or two. But I grew out of it quickly after getting too many citations. It also didn’t help that I didn’t go to court on a couple of them because I knew I was going to have to pay a fine and didn’t have any money. Getting arrested for an FTA (failure to appear) after getting pulled over for another driving violation is not the way to impress your girlfriend passenger. After that, I decided that I’d rather keep my hard-earned money in my pocket as opposed to writing fat checks to the government for ridiculously high fines for moving violations.

Maybe I’m being foolish here, but it is assumed that everyone driving a car or riding a motorcycle in L.A. also possesses a valid California Class C driver’s license or a California M1 motorcycle license which means that they read and studied the CA Driver’s Handbook and passed both the written exam and the driving test or motorcycle skills test. This implies that they know what the actual rules of the road are. But alas, being a regular driver, walker, and cyclist here in L.A., I feel that my life is in constant danger because there are so many terrible, inattentive, discourteous, a-holes in cars and on motorcycles. You know who you are.

I’ve also spent countless hours being stuck in traffic so thick on the I-405 on the west side of Los Angeles, that I could walk to LAX over the roofs of the cars faster than driving to it. Ironically, slow, thick traffic like this does not discourage L.A. drivers from being incredibly rude, reckless, and absolutely dangerous even at snail’s pace speeds.

An Implied Mutual Trust Blown to Smithereens

The vehicle code was developed to make people aware of the law and what their personal responsibilities are as a driver or motorcyclist. So, it is assumed that if I have a driver’s license and you have a driver’s license that were both issued by the same state, we mutually know what the rules of the road are within that state and therefore there is a baked in default level of implied mutual trust in the system. For example, I trust that you know that it is illegal to run through a red stop light and you trust that I know the exact same thing. You cannot claim ignorance about this sort of thing because it is part and parcel of the driver’s handbook. The roads are much safer this way, right? Right! But here in L.A., I see drivers and motorcyclists constantly running red lights, and regularly speeding to do it – especially the left-hand arrow turns. This blatant disregard of the law obliterates the implied mutual trust, is extremely dangerous, and can have fatal consequences. Knock it off.

Lack of Turn Signals

These are used to inform other drivers around you of your intention of changing lanes or turning right or turning left. They have been mandatory on cars since 1967, so unless you’re driving a classic car that requires hand signals, your car has them. Turn signals are really easy to use too: You stick out a finger on your left hand and move the little lever sticking out of the steering column up to indicate a right-hand turn or move the little lever down to indicate a left-hand turn. So simple. As a fellow driver, I appreciate knowing which direction you are intending to go so that I can anticipate any directional changes that I may need to make or any braking that I may need to apply to prevent a collision with your presumably cherished Tesla, you know, all in the name of safety.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of you either find turn signals too difficult to operate, or aren’t aware of how they actually work, or entirely forgot about California Vehicle Code 22108, which requires all drivers to signal at least 100 feet prior to making a turn or changing lanes. Or maybe it’s really because you just don’t care about being a safe, courteous, and mindful driver and would rather live your life as a rude, selfish, asinine jerk who doesn’t mind it when people flip you the bird. Please, be nice and use the lever thingy. Thank you.

Incessant Speeding

Prima facie speed limit signs be damned – I’ll drive as fast as I f-ing want! This appears to be the default attitude of many L.A. drivers and motorcyclists. I’m not exactly sure why, but I’m thinking that this is because so many people here in L.A. have their heads up their rectum and can’t see the road signs. Or maybe they watched too many Fast and Furious movies and forgot that they were fiction. My experience is that if the posted speed limit is 45-MPH, everyone is driving 55-MPH…or faster. But there are always those drivers that must go faster than everyone else even when everyone else is already blatantly speeding. These are the drivers that are always involved in those horrific crashes that are covered on the local television news. People get hurt or killed because of them. Private and public property are damaged or destroyed because of them. Sometimes the speeding driver gets killed too which is maybe Darwinism at work and I’m actually okay with that because it’s better that they are off the road anyway. Please slow down for the sake of everyone around you – the life you save may be your own.

Stop Signs & Limit Lines

Stop. This is a word that we learn at a very early age. I won’t bore you with the multitude of dictionary definitions of the word itself, but everyone knows what stop actually means…that is, with the exception of L.A. drivers of course. I certainly do know that there is no other way to interpret the word stop: You either stop or you don’t. The lack of the stopping at the limit line is exceptionally dangerous for walkers and cyclists. For the sake of public safety, just take a few seconds to stop like you’re required to do. Thanks in advance.

Limit lines – also referred to as stop lines – are not optional. Per California Code, Vehicle Code – VEH § 22450:

(a) The driver of any vehicle approaching a stop sign at the entrance to, or within, an intersection shall stop at a limit line, if marked, otherwise before entering the crosswalk on the near side of the intersection.

Legally speaking, the word shall is an imperative command, usually indicating that certain actions are mandatory, and not permissive. Seems crystal clear to me. Then again, California invented the California Roll. I’m not writing about sushi here; I’m writing about a rolling “stop” when a driver does not come to a complete stop at a stop sign and rolls right through, so there’s that. As a regular walker in my neighborhood, why do I have to keep my head on a swivel to avoid getting run over in a crosswalk because nobody actually stops to save like 2-seconds of their time? Maybe they should keep in mind that a car is a deadly weapon, and they might hurt or kill someone by disregarding the law. Delivery drivers are the worst offenders of this – I’m talking to you DHL, Amazon, UPS, FedEX, DoorDash, UberEats and PostMates drivers. Try paying attention to the goddamn law for a change!

Mobile Phones & Other Electronic Distractions

The bane of all banes. Texting, Instagramming, Facebooking, watching cat videos, TV shows, full-length movies, and likely some pornography while driving a 2-ton vehicle is ludicrous. Eyes should be on the road in front of you – not on the screen of you darling iOS or Android powered handheld device you’re clutching in your hand. Aside from being an illegal activity while operating a motor vehicle, the distraction level is akin to that of a naked person walking in front of you: For whatever human psychological reason, you just can’t take your eyes off of them, warts, and all.

It used to be that the radio was the primary distraction while driving followed perhaps by lighting a cigarette. Nowadays, the radio has been replaced by streaming music on your phone via Bluetooth and cigarettes have been replaced with vaporizers, of which I am never certain if what is being vaporized is actually a tobacco or a cannabis product. As far as I’m concerned, smoking cannabis while driving is no different than cracking open a beer and drinking it while driving – either way, you are driving under the influence which makes you a far more dangerous driver. This also makes me wonder about how many people are driving under the influence of pharmaceutical drugs which may explain much of the problem. Regardless, your responsibility as a driver of a motor vehicle is to be safe, not high, so try focusing on that, please.

Tailgating     

Why is tailgating even a thing? Unless you’re a NASCAR or F1 driver drafting the car in front of you to get an edge, there’s absolutely no point. Also, rear-end collisions are the most frequent type of car crash, so why would you want to increase the chances of crashing your presumably favorite, often expensive car into mine by decreasing the time to react? Also, I’m pretty sure that you don’t want to pay a $1,000 deductible so there is that little financial consideration. Tailgating is entirely reckless, extremely dangerous, and can easily be avoided; all you need to do is…back the hell off. Why not use the one car-length per 10-miles of speed rule or the 3-seconds behind the car in front of you rule? This is not a difficult thing to do. Try it!

If I’m stuck in thick traffic and can’t see the front license plate of your car in my rear-view mirror, you are maybe a little bit too close. If I can count the dead insects on your front grille, you are absolutely too close. But in L.A., this happens at 80-MPH. Being so close at that speed you might as well get in my car so we can use the carpool lane and save a little commute time. On the other hand, you may be the recipient of a random brake check which will evaluate your reflex time and put your bad little tailgating habit to the test and potentially give me the opportunity to call Larry H. Parker. Please be courteous and allow me and everyone else on the road some needed space. Thank you.

Car Clubs

Mulholland Drive, Pacific Coast Highway, Kanan Road, and Malibu Canyon are typical weekend car club takeovers where I live. It’s a collective circle jerk. They use the power of numbers to intimidate…and they know they’ll get away with it.

If you’re some poor soul driving along one of these roads and minding the speed limit and a Subaru WRX car club comes up behind you, you will get tailgated, flashing lights, and as-close-as-possible illegal passing over a double solid yellow line often on a curve. If you’re a cyclist, this is the most terrifying and dangerous situation that you can imagine. C’mon, people; you know that public roads are not for racing – how about maybe taking your car club to the track instead of endangering everyone else on the road? Cool it with the juvenile Ricky Road Racer attitude and stop pretending you are a professional race driver (you’re not even close) on public roads and take it to the track where you can really test your mettle while also keeping other motorists safe.

Motorcycle Clubs

These guys have a similar attitude to the car clubs with the takeovers and intimidation tactics but zip by at even higher speeds.

Generally speaking, the motorcycle clubs break out into two distinct groups: Imported and domestic.

The two groups have very different riding styles too. The import guys are always going as fast as possible, usually in single file, often sliding out and crashing when they push the envelope too far. One day while I was climbing Glendora Mountain Road (GMR) on my road bike with my wife and some friends, a guy on a Yamaha YZF was coming down much too fast and slid out across lanes on a hard right turn directly in front of us – almost taking out the front cyclists in our group – and hit the concrete K-Rail on the opposite side which stopped him from descending a hundred feet off a cliff edge which would likely have been fatal. His riding bros all stopped and blocked traffic going up and down GMR, including us cyclists which was completely unnecessary. Fortunately, the rider limped away, but his Yamaha was unrideable. SLOW THE HELL DOWN, BOYS!

And now we come to the Harley Bros, the most obnoxious motorcycle riding group of them all. Typically, these are a bunch of fattish middle-aged men with graying pedophile goatees clad in black leather vests with a club name on the back like Sofa King Phat, or Weasels on Wheels, wearing those stupid ugly black Nazi-light (or is it Darth Vader-light?) looking helmets, and riding side-by-side on a narrow two-lane road and making as much noise as possible with their garish BarcaLounger sized $50K V-twin noise making machines complete with cup holders for their skinny organic milk fair trade lattes or Bud Light beer cans. It’s a let’s pretend we’re one-percenters kind of thing, and these guys apparently really hate cyclists. I say this from personal experience.

Maybe the Harley Bros don’t know this, but per California Vehicle Code 2176 – effective since September 16, 2014 mind you:

California law requires at least three feet of clearance when passing a bicyclist on the road.  When three feet is not possible, the driver of the motor vehicle shall slow to a reasonable and prudent speed and pass only when doing so would not endanger the safety of the bicyclists, taking into account the size and speed of the motor vehicle and bicycle, traffic conditions, weather, visibility, and surface and width of roadway.  Failing to do so can incur a fine, regardless of a collision or not.

Then again, maybe I’m wrong to assume the Harley Bros can actually read or can approximate three feet of clearance. Bros, here’s a clue; it is approximately the distance from the center of your chest to your fingertips, give or take a little for the girth of the individual, who is often expanded due to how much beer the Harley Bro guzzled down that morning.

This law also seems crystal clear to me, but three feet of clearance is apparently lost on the Bros. I’ve been run off the road too many times. I’ve been intentionally passed within inches of a Harley handlebar striking the left-hand side of my road bike drop bars. The Harley Bro specialty is cracking their throttles wide-open (to a noise level definitely far above the CA legal maximum decibel level of 80dbA) when they are right next to you as they speed by, making you flinch by reflex while also making your ears ring. I would think that a cyclist would get a little bit more respect than that being that we are also on two wheels and don’t have any significant protection other than our helmets. Nope. We’re apparently intentional targets of the Bros.

Oh, and most of these drivers and motorcycle riders I’m referring to here are male. Guys: You can do better than this. Harley Bros: Knock it off with the land pirate cosplay caca del toro already and behave yourselves. Car club drivers: Take it to the track. Thanks a lot. Kisses!

A Special Mention Goes Out to the Arrogant Prius and Tesla Drivers

I’m just going to come right out and ask; why are you all a bunch of arrogant, self-righteous jerks? Driving one of these car models does not give you license to drive like an a-hole.

Aside from being guilty of all of the bad driving habits listed above, weaving in and out of lanes and cutting people off, passing cars from the right-hand turn lane, driving 65 in a 35, and driving in the HOV lane with a single passenger and no CAV (clean air vehicle) tags from the CA DMV on your bumper is how you raise the ire of the law-abiding drivers around you that are flipping you off.

You Prius drivers regularly going exactly 65-MPH in the fast lane while all of the other traffic is zipping around you at 75-MPH is an obvious sign that you are both a road hazard and possess zero situational awareness. Either move over to the slow lane with the cement trucks where you belong or get off the freeway and take the side streets. Or maybe just sell your super ugly car and get a bus pass and take public transportation instead.

I don’t know what’s going on with the Tesla drivers, but you are either driving 65-MPH like the idiotic Prius drivers or you’re driving 95-MPH like the boneheads in the car clubs. I don’t understand the reason for this, but you are dangerous either way. Why don’t you just go with the flow? I mean, with all of those fancy electronics and sensors and sonar and radar installed in your Tesla it can probably drive itself better than you can, so maybe try autopilot. On the other hand, one just has to be somewhat reasonable and possess a modicum of situational awareness to be a safe, courteous driver that doesn’t want to make fellow drivers angry or endanger anyone with their assortment of bad driving habits. Why don’t you give that courteous thing a try?

And no, Barney, you really are not special; you are just one the many sheeple living and driving in Los Angeles that think you are cool in your HEV, PHEV or flashy BEV car when you’re actually not.

Try something new: How about trying not to drive like an a-hole for a day or two or maybe even forever?

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