If there is one trait that Los Angeles has become famous for, it's the city's unabashed love affair with its automobiles. The city touts more than 25 interwoven freeways, which handle millions of commuters, automotive and otherwise, every day. Unsurprisingly, Los Angeles is the most car-populated metro area on the globe, with one registered auto for every one and a half persons.

Southern California's highways, in conjunction with the area's beaches, palm trees, and movie studios are among the major trademarks of the West Coast region. As aforementioned, it is doubtful that any other urban area in the world has embraced the automobile as fully as Los Angeles. The never-ending freeway system is dispersed throughout the still quickly growing area, connecting local cities with both suburbs and exurbs.

Furthering the love affair, the Art Center College of Design has assisted in making Southern California a mecca for car design. Automotive manufacturers such as Honda, BMW, Toyota, Ford, VW, Hyundai, and GM all have design studios in the area.

On the negative side, Los Angeles is notorious for its longstanding under-funding of road maintenance, no doubt partly due to the city's enormous size total. This allows for a inordinate number of potholes, meaning high vehicle maintenance costs for residents. Extreme angst over potholes was a deciding factor in the abortive 2002 secession of the San Fernando Valley county.

With so much traffic, certain parts of Los Angeles' roads are completely gridlocked at rush hour. Unfortunately, collector streets and smaller roads are usually all equally clogged, so there are no available detours.

To no one's surprise, with so many automobiles extant, red light running is common. To fix this, mounted cameras have been procured for many problem intersections. The cameras activate when an automobile passes a red light and then unceremoniously sends a ticket to the driver's registered address. No systems is perfect, however, and there was a big stink raised when it was ascertained that specific intersections with cameras did more to generate revenue in fines than to increase public safety.