Tickets for turning right on green

It's illegal to turn right onto La Brea from Clinton Avenue during rush hour, and so many Hollywood traffic cops lie in wait that it has become fun entertainment for the inmates at Hancock Park Senior Assisted Living to watch tickets get written. There's a big sign announcing the ban, but the LA Weekly's Michael Krikorian finds drivers keep turning right anyway.

Now comes Los Angeles City Hall’s attempt to mediate between the increasing crush of drivers trying to turn right — in this case in overbuilt Hollywood — and the increasing numbers of new residents trying to cross in front of those cars....

According to John Fisher, of the city’s transportation department, such bans are still rare in Los Angeles. “I would say there are maybe a handful, and by handful I mean maybe two dozen, signs like that in the city,” he says. “But most of them are in residential areas to prevent drivers from driving through neighborhoods. This is a very unique corner.”On Clinton at La Brea, either drivers don’t pay attention, or they think it’s only applicable on red lights (a right-turn ban on green being unimaginable) or they simply choose to ignore the signs.

That’s a $159 mistake. And it’s so far outside standard operating procedure that one well-known Hollywood-area activist, former mayoral candidate Larry Green, has been seen near Bais Yaakov school warning motorists not to turn. “This is a complaint location,” says Officer Smith of West Traffic Division’s Community Traffic Services Unit. “Maybe the [Bais Yaakov] teachers complained, or the parents of the students. We have more than 40 ‘complaint locations’ in Hollywood Division alone. This is one of the worst.”

Krikorian saw one violator get off with a warning because the traffic cop had run out of tickets.