Driving home today, I reached a powerless stretch of Western where traffic lights were out for blocks. Free-for-all intersections actually aren’t that bad. If you’re in a long line of traffic, you’ll move forward pretty slowly waiting your turn to cross the intersection, but if you approach from one of the side streets intending to cross a major street or make a left turn onto one, whereas under normal circumstances you’d usually have to wait minutes for the light to turn green, you’ll probably be first in line and need only wait a very short time for your break. Most drivers are extremely careful, and courtesy seems to be the rule.

The other morning, driving _to_ work this time, the light was out at the intersection of two very large streets, Venice and La Brea. Although the rule is that if a light is out or broken drivers should treat the crossing as controlled by all-way stop signs, that’s not very efficient, especially when heavy traffic comes from all directions and both or all streets have several lanes. There’s overhead involved in waiting for the intersection to clear so the directions of traffic flow can change. What’s interesting here is that despite the law drivers seemed to instinctively coordinate this, and alternated direction every few cars. I.e., in each lane, two or three cars would proceed across, and then two or three cars from each lane in the other direction would go, and so on.

I guess when L.A. drivers are forced to pay attention (for example in these situations where each driver has to look out for him- or herself, yet everyone has a common goal), they’re not that bad.