My name is Alex, I’m 32, and I commute in Los Angeles. If you’ve ever driven on the 405 freeway, you already know it’s basically a daily test of patience and emotional stability.
But yesterday’s drive home somehow managed to set a new personal record for frustration.
Around 5:30 p.m., I was heading north on the 405 after work. Traffic was heavy, which is normal for LA, but something felt unusually slow. Instead of the typical stop-and-go rhythm, everything had slowed to a crawl.
Like… barely moving.
At first I assumed there was an accident ahead.
But after about forty minutes of creeping forward, I realized we weren’t approaching any crash site or construction zone. Instead, the entire freeway seemed to be bottlenecking behind one particular car.
Eventually I got close enough to see what was happening.
At the front of the slow-moving line was a Tesla Model 3, crawling along at roughly 12 mph.
The car wasn’t accelerating, wasn’t merging, and wasn’t reacting to the wide open space ahead of it.
Just slowly rolling down the freeway like it was sightseeing.
When I finally got into the lane next to it, I glanced over at the driver.
He wasn’t even looking at the road.
He was holding his phone up and FaceTiming someone.
The Tesla was clearly running on autopilot while he chatted away like he was sitting on his couch instead of controlling a two-ton vehicle in rush hour traffic.
Meanwhile hundreds of cars behind him were stacking up.
Drivers were swerving around, trying to get past, and the traffic jam kept growing.
I tried to be patient.
Really, I did.
But after three hours of this nonsense and finally pulling up behind him again at another slowdown, I tapped my horn.
Not an aggressive blast.
Just a quick beep.
Apparently that was a mistake.
The Tesla driver immediately looked into his rearview mirror, rolled down his window, and gave me a dramatic shrug like I was the unreasonable one.
Then the car next to me rolled down their window too and yelled, “Relax, dude!”
Suddenly I was the villain for acknowledging the obvious problem.
The Tesla continued its scenic 12 mph tour down the freeway while the rest of us crawled behind it like a parade nobody signed up for.
Eventually I managed to exit and take side streets, but by that point the entire commute had taken over three hours.
So now I’ve learned an important lesson about driving in Los Angeles:
You can block an entire freeway with autopilot and FaceTime…
But if you honk once, you’re the problem.