I'm NOT in LA but ALL California does this (at least SoCal):
A car is broken down on the freeway pulled over off the street, out of the way. The freeway, going BOTH ways (even if it's a divided freeway with a cement divider)comes to a halt. I swear to God. We call them looky-loos.
You literally can crawl for an hour or more than suddenly, you pass the car to side of the road, and traffic flows again. That is so annoying.
TIS
I work in Irvine, and the other day I was driving home on the 55-N, and at 8:30 in the morning, there is very little northbound traffic on the 55. Yet as soon as I transitioned from the 405 to the 55, it was gridlocked, bumper to bumper. So I'm thinking to myself "Hm...must be an accident." Sure enough, about 2 or 3 miles down, I see an ambulance and a couple CHP's pulled onto the median, with a wrecked motorcycle being loaded onto the cab of a truck. Now I don't know any other details about the accident, or if the driver was okay, but I do know this: NO lanes were blocked because of the accident, everything that was going on was INSIDE THE MEDIAN! And yet traffic was backed up for 3 miles. Why? Because of those goddamn lookie-loos!
As soon as we passed the crash site, the freeway was empty!
