Why cars drive without their lights at night in California....

*Just to caveat, this is definitely not a rant entry, just a small observation.*

Riding my bike at night along Wilshire / Main Street / Santa Monica Blvd at night, I realize a lot of cars drive without their lights on. This almost never happens in New York. It's not because people are less forgetful in New York, or they have more cars that automatically turns them on.

I think this really speaks to the sociological aspects of the two places. There has been a few times where I forgot to turn on my lights in New York, but people would high beam me to remind me. Everyone knows to do that, and everyone knows what it means. In contrast, I was driving in torrential downpour (yes, it does rain in LA) one night, and kept high beaming the car in front of me who forgot to turn on his light. He didn't understand why I was highbeaming him, so I drove next to him and opened my window to try to tell him. Not only did he not understand again, but he turned at the next intersection thinking I was a crazy aggressive driver.

Because of the population density in New York, people need to look out for one another. Because there is human interaction on a daily basis, people have unwritten rules. Case in point, when merging two lanes in New York, it's always left lane merge in, then right, then left, and so forth. In Los Angeles on the other hand, you have certain drivers that just never go, and certain drivers that are too aggressive that prevents the driver from the other lane from entering.

So though New York is chaotic, crowded, and full of crazy people, some kind of order is naturally established. On the contrary, this kind of natural order never developed in Los Angeles.