Listening to the gentle pitter pattering of the rain drops on the window does have a calming effect admittedly, and, at least for me, whenever it's raining, I sleep like a baby.
But another aspect that rain amplifies, sadly, is the obvious lack of driving skills of Southern Californians. As fascinating as rain may be, it seems to sudden render everyone unable to operate a car. Suddenly, the normal 70mph freeway traffic turns into 35mph crawls, and the normal 35mph surface streets turn into 5mph parking lots. It's as if these commuters are saying, "Oh no! It's a puddle! If I drive into it at anything more than 10mph I'll spin wildly out of control and end up in a ditch!"
Of course there are those on the opposite end of the spectrum. The ones that maintain their 80mph velocities in 1 inch of standing water. More likely than not by people with four-wheel-drive, with a false sense of security. Or maybe by those with cars chocked full of electronic safety interference devices (ESP, VDC, DSC, TCS and so on). In all probability, they end up in a ditch.
I'm not sure whether this is the result of massively inadequate driver education, or just the general decline in the overall intelligence of the society, but whatever the case, it certainly boggles the mind. It really is a sad sad statement about Southern Californians, whether it says everyone here is so feeble minded that a little rain flummoxes their brains, or it says they're so devoid of common sense and the knowledge of basic physics to avoid crashing into a ditch, just because of a bit of drizzle. If all the world was like this, people in Norway should be traveling around on moose, and people in Oregon should all be in a ditch on fire.
Sure, no need to take my word for it. But as a piece of evidence to consider, here is a snap shot of www.sigalert.com taken today (a bank holiday), at about 2:30pm.
Diamonds, in this case, are not a girl's best friend.
