Fueling a ruthless arena

Everyone here is talking about the high fuel prices. US petrol prices are still less than half those in the UK, but then US vehicles are more than twice the size, so I suppose it all evens out. If they adopted European sized cars they'd be laughing all the way the fuel pump, but it will never happen. Like so many apparently illogical consumer decisions the reason is fear, the American opinion-maker's friend.

As a longtime resident of London I thought I knew a thing or two about driving in a big city. I've even survived the tortured arena of driving in a Spanish city (Spanish drivers are a hybrid of Mediterranean car habits - as fast as the Italians and as unskilled as the French). Nothing, though, had prepared me for the horror of LA County's freeways. At first glance, traffic is usually so static that it's difficult to see how crashes could possibly occur. At 8am, the San Diego Freeway makes the M25 look like Brands Hatch. It's only when things get moving that the trouble starts.

There is an apparent randomness of movement that would challenge even the most seasoned student of Chaos Theory. It's a bit like looking at fluid molecules traveling down a tube - everything moves more or less in the the same direction but there's a lot of bouncing off the walls and each other. Similarly, the trajectory of a particular vehicle is as difficult to predict as that of an individual molecule. Indicators, like in-car cup-holders, are considered by LA drivers to be an occasional convenient accessory, no more.

With all this close-packed, high-speed Brownian motion going on there are inevitably a lot of collisions. The Californian's solution is not to adjust driving habits accordingly, but to invest in bigger, more robust steel cages to drive around in. Consider the example of my advisor, a woman who lectures undergraduate courses in environmental impacts, and who contends that she would 'like to buy a Mini for the sake of the environment, but if you get in a crash you're screwed'. If you thought the Cold War ended in the 90s, think again. There's a whole new arms race going on in the San Fernando Valley.

For now then, people here will apply the 'British Approach' to the fuel-price problem (i.e. sit around whingeing and blaming the government, but not actually doing anything proactive themselves). Fuel prices will continue to rise, and suburban mothers will continue to surround their families in ever larger battering rams.

The future of Californian commuting - and you thought Kings Cross was bad at rush hour