Bad And Getting Bad

There's been rain in Los Angeles over the last few days. It hasn't been too severe by even local standards, and presumably looked milder still to those from naturally rainier locales. It rains seldom here, but commonly rains hard for a week straight when it does. This wasn't one of those, although maybe it could strengthen into one. That's not the point, anyway. The point is more about our reaction to it.

What you usually start hearing about before long is how everybody is freaking out on the roads. I guess that's true. I'm not heavily invested in driving activities, as I don't myself drive. Still, I have the advantage of being strictly an observer and not a combatant in the wars that are driving and parking anywhere, let alone here. Do people really come unglued driving in the rain? I guess that's fair to say, to a point.

The baseline for sanity in driving is not too good to begin with. All I ever hear is how terrible drivers are in Los Angeles, but in other cities they say the exact same thing. If they're really bad everwhere, I don't think they would get better anywhere in inclement weather, but it's hard to imagine things getting any worse. Maybe it's a thing where people are getting the seasonal affective disorder, or whatever you call it when people get depressed at the holidays.

One of the lamest things to do is talk about the weather with people you don't know well because it's a safe topic (or used to be, before the environment became politicized), but here I am doing it. That's funny to me, because what's goofy is that what we have here is peopling indirectly talking about the weather by talking about each other, and toward what end? Nobody's getting shame into driving any better.