What a California Stop is


A California Stop is a slang term for just slowing down at a stop sign, and treating it like a yield sign. I always lived in crowded areas, like Phoenix or Los Angeles (and even my old neighborhood in Minneapolis where I grew up), so while I'm familiar with California Stops, I've never done one, but I know that there are people who do them. I'll see if I can explain who should, and shouldn't do a California Stop.

First of all, for those of you who are saying "No cop, no stop", you should stop. In other words, it's illegal and you could get a ticket. You also may be the person who knew exactly how many tardies you could have at school before you got detention, and exactly how many people need to be following you before you need to pull over while towing (I could never get that one right on my driver's tests!). If you're a conceptual thinker, not a rote learner, I'll explain why, aside from it's being illegal, a California stop is perfectly fine.

Cars were around for a very long time before stop signs, or traffic lights, or any of that stuff. They operated the same way that wagons pulled by horses did, or the way that you push a shopping cart through a grocery store, keeping a reasonable pace for the circumstances, watching out for obstacles and other vehicles, yielding when necessary, and stopping when necessary. 

Of course, back in the day vehicles went much slower. Even if you were taking a drink of whiskey in your wagon pulled by Bessie, you could still react if another vehicle needed to go by. And before cars had cigarette lighters and automatic transmissions, the average person would light a Lucky and find second gear even if they needed to move out of the way of the trolley, or another car. But over the years as cars got faster it became more and more difficult, until you practically needed to be Steve McQueen to drive without paying much attention to stop signs.

Speaking for myself, I like it when I'm a passenger in a car and the driver seems to know what stop signs, and traffic lights are for. One of my favorite stories is when James Thurber went for a ride in a car with someone during the Holiday season, and they thought that the red and green lights were just Christmas decorations!

In my lifetime I've seen some pretty silly traffic laws, like having to go 55 miles an hour across an empty stretch of desert on road designed for cars to go 80. And the lesson that the U.S. learned there was to be a little bit more careful about what they tell people to do, so that they don't "pick and choose" which laws to follow, like stopping for a red light.

My grandma taught me to never use the word "hick", but I'm sure that there are people who live in much-less-populated places, who scoff at stop signs. And since I'm from LA, I do, and they know that I'm one of them-thar "city slickers" (also not a nice term). And so if people can see forever in all directions, on a lonely road that might have had a dog walking along it an hour ago and they see a stop sign, they'll hesitate, treat it like a yield sign, and go. That's a California Stop.

Image at the top of this post: Canoga Park, California in the 1950s. It's a suburb of LA, and back then you could do a California Stop. I don't recommend it nowadays!

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