Comment/question No. 1: When I was a teenager in the late '60s, I was ticketed by the Ontario P.D. for excessive noise. The officer told me that because the music was audible outside the vehicle it was excessive and a public nuisance. My question is, how do the kids get away with the rolling boom boxes now? Recently I nearly collided with a fire truck at an intersection due to the fact that I didn't hear the siren because of the noise from the car next to me. Not only is this annoying, but it is dangerous and these vehicles need to be cited. Maria, Ontario
Comment/question No. 2: Wasn't there a law or ordinance or something passed a while back that made it illegal to play your car radio so loud that it could be heard 150 feet from your vehicle? Loud radios are more distracting to the driving public than cell phones in that drivers of other cars are affected by the noise. A small aside to this issue is that small children who are virtually captive in vehicles are having their hearing impacted by such loud volume. It would seem to me that it verges on child abuse. Sue Coes
Answer: Maria and Sue, you have every right to be aggravated. If music is amplified to the point where it can be heard outside of a vehicle from 50 or more feet away, the driver is in violation of Vehicle Code 27007 and can be cited.
Cool reader comment: Michelle, here is another creative plate: O2BNOGG, seen in Upland. It means "Oh to be in Maui." OGG is the airport at Kahalui, Maui. You see, even though there is no "G" in the Hawaiian alphabet, the OGG comes from "Captain Boggs," the first chief pilot for Hawaiian Airlines, way-back-when. We really enjoy your columns. Doug Neely
Drive Time Reminder: Sgt. Cliff Mathews, Special Services Division commander of the Upland Police Department, wanted me to remind you how to respond to failed traffic signals. Having never been one to disregard authority, I am dutifully printing this reminder: Whether the failure is caused by heat-related rolling black-outs or simply a technical failure of the signal, you need to treat blacked-out intersections exactly as if there were stop signs present.
Question: When two cars are at an intersection with stop signs and are facing each other, with one having a turn signal to make a left turn, which one should yield? I've always believed the one making the left turn should yield, but people seem to think that it's whoever was there last. J. Knapp, Rialto
Answer: The people are correct, J. In the scenario that you portrayed, the driver who arrives first has the right-of-way.
Cool reader comment: A number of years ago while I was cruising around the East Mojave Desert on a scientific field trip, I saw this 'grizzly' old guy in a beat-up pickup truck. The bumper sticker he had was the best I'd seen. It read as follows: "Wife and Dog Missing - Reward for Dog ". Chuck, Claremont
Michelle Groh-Gordy is the owner of InterActive! Traffic School Online at www.trafficinteractive.com , and writes a syndicated weekly column on driving for the publications of the Los Angeles Newspaper Group.
