You just miss being rammed by a car running a red light. Then you curse that other guy who didn’t signal before abruptly turning left in front of you.
Admit it — don’t you always growl after these near-misses: “Why isn’t there a cop around when you need one?”
But more than a century ago, somebody actually did come up with a novel attempt to do something about drivers who think the rules of the road are for everyone else.
In 1920, the Automobile Club of Southern California, in response to an alarming increase in auto accidents, appointed 200 automobile “vigilantes” to be secretly on the lookout for four-wheel transgressors.
For the next six years, undercover Auto Club volunteers were tasked to observe violations, note a car’s license number and write down on a special card the details of the violation, time and place. The cards were given to police to alert them of those poor drivers, though the information couldn’t be used for a citation. The Auto Club also wrote a letter to each violator, explaining what was observed and urging them to drive more carefully.
The undercover observers began work on April 1, 1920, with the lofty goal of “curbing the reckless driving which is seen every day,” noted the Pomona Progress-Bulletin, March 16. “Hereafter it will do no good for the speeder to glance behind him to see if a cop is coming. The autoist he is racing to pass may be a member of the vigilance committee.”
Violators might be initially upset to get the Auto Club letter, but they were reminded it was better to receive the warning in the mail than get a traffic ticket they probably deserved from a police officer. And mail boxes were jammed with those letters. In 1923, there were 36,971 violations reported by the Auto Club in Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties.
There were some interesting statistics about how well each gender steers their automobiles. According to 10,000 violations observed in the first three months of 1922, many men and women displayed an absence of good driving skills.
“The women are not careless like the men,” said an article about the Auto Club information in the Pomona Bulletin of July 23, 1922. “Their derelictions are unintentional while male drivers deliberately disobey traffic laws.”
Driving problems were “unpremeditated” for women drivers. “They are impulsive, and if there is a traffic jam ahead of them they will breeze around to see what is the trouble and sometimes get caught in a bad crowd,” said the report.
“But they don’t deliberately cut corners or fail to give correct signs as many men do.”
This was a time where many streets, especially in the Inland Empire, were still unpaved with only a few traffic lights helping regulate busy areas. And the familiar automobile electronic turn signals of today were still years away.
But the Auto Club figures showed when it came to sticking out their arms to signal a turn, women were much more reliable than men.
“They are most earnest in signaling, and often start to wave their arms when they are a block from the turning point,” noted the article, “but their intention is good and is better than giving no sign at all.”
One other odd bit of information released determined that Ontario was a particularly dangerous place to drive a car.
“There are twice as many automobile accidents in Ontario as in most cities of double the size in the state,” explained Ed J. Dirking, local representative of the Auto Club, in the Ontario Daily Report of Oct. 21, 1921. And people most involved in accidents were local residents.
“Very few accidents happen to the great number of tourist machines which go through here daily,” Dirking said. “Ontarians seem to feel so perfectly at home that they are careless.”
While all this was going on, the Auto Club in 1922 also asked for help after “scores of women” drivers reported being annoyed by mobile “male flirts,” wrote the Los Angeles Times on March 31. Men would “drive alongside and force their attentions” on the growing number of women who had become drivers during those Roaring 20s days.
The Auto Club vigilance committee appears to have ended by late 1926. In February of that year, it provided newspapers a copy of a letter from a frustrated citizen who maintained he knew the reasons for so many bad drivers on the roads. “The three H’s caused 75 percent of the motor accidents,” he wrote, “hooch, hugging and haste.”
Route 66 tour
A two-day tour of desert-area sites along Southern California’s portion of Route 66 will be held Sept. 13 and 14 by the California Historic Route 66 Association.
The cost is $20. The bus on the first day leaves Barstow for stops in Amboy, Chambless and Needles before returning to Barstow. The second day makes stops in Daggett and Newberry Springs, as well as Barstow’s historic train station.
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OC History: How Orange County got its name Long Beach’s longstanding Olympics history to be on display at new Historical Society exhibit 102-year-old woman rides Huntington Beach’s first fire engine — both born in 1922 New book marks 100 years of Route 66 From the Mystery Spot near Santa Cruz to the Mystery Shack near Barstow, magnetic hills are always a drawIt’s called the Route 66 Centennial Tour and is in anticipation of the 100th anniversary in 2026 of the creation of John Steinbeck’s “Mother Road.” It is one of many tours of California historic sites under the fourth annual Doors Open California program, which allows people access to more than 75 historic sites in the state on weekends in September.
To reserve a seat, go to californiapreservation.org/doca It includes information on discounted rates at a local hotel in Barstow.
Mansion tours
Tours of the Phillips Mansion will be offered Sunday between 2 and 5 p.m. by the Historical Society of the Pomona Valley. The historic site is at 2640 Pomona Blvd., Pomona.
Tickets at $15 must be purchased online before the day of the event at PomonaHistorical.org.
Joe Blackstock writes on Inland Empire history. He can be reached at joe.blackstock@gmail.com or X @JoeBlackstock. Check out some columns of the past at Inland Empire Stories on Facebook at www.facebook.com/IEHistory.
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