UNITED STATES—This was the best year of my life. I shall make no feeble attempt to hang onto the unhangable and give up any pretense of clinging to a past even before the calendar relinquishes the year’s final dates. Nor shall I bore you with why this was the best year for me (you and I are so selfish and self-absorbed that the details would only be more proof of that common human condition).

Instead, let me present for your consideration why I believe the world, my little circumscribed world between La Brea and Fairfax Avenue, to be better. The photoflash stoplights were taken from the intersections of La Brea and Fountain and Fairfax and Fountain, not to mention at the thorny Bermuda Triangle crossing at Robertson and Beverly (I’ve witnessed no fewer than two fender-benders at this gateway to the chi-chi shopping zone where—have you noticed?—women with shopping bags feel entitled to jaywalk).

On a typical day, I go up and down Fountain Avenue and through these intersections up to six times. So, with the removal of the photo-monitoring equipment, thus ends fifteen years of oppression. Hallelujah!

That first lightning bolt flash lit up the whole corner of La Brea and Fountain after a car plowed through speeding with the sound of a whip cracking. It scared the bejeesus out of me; I thought there had been rifle fire. Erin, our guide in the city said, “Oh, that’s just the photo flash.” There was a sizable fine involved and I became truly neurotic. Whenever I saw a flash, any little flash, I freaked out—and there were a lot of random flashes that emitted from those robots. In the beginning I would feel “out of sorts” for a couple hours, wanting instant atonement for this imagined moving violation.

For days thereafter, I’d be watching the mailbox for photographic tidings that I’d been caught in flagrante, running a red. Worse still, caught running a yellow that turned into a red halfway through, making it appear as if I had run a red light. It was a blessing when nothing came—one of these invisible blessings that need to be counted.

By traffic school, I was conditioned that “yellow means slow” and prepare to stop. At the hint of yellow I’d jam on the brakes, causing books on my seat to fly to the floor of Chatita. (That’s my car.) I had learned over 15 years to brake lightly in advance, and always glance in the rearview to see that no one was up against my bumper, to avoid being rear-ended.

About six weeks ago I stopped abruptly during rush hour. The lady in the SUV behind went into full exasperated mode with the arm in the air gesture, the twisted face. This is when I looked over and saw that the blue sentinels containing the cameras no longer flanked the stoplight poles. I was freed from 15 years of oppression and neurosis instantly. I wanted to get out and hug that unhappy office worker behind me, angel of good news.

Thus a full-blown neurosis and automotive psychopathy was buried. I’m happy to see it gone, though it wasn’t completely without the side benefits: learning to live with harrowing doubt and becoming a more skillful and observant driver. Also, a monitored intersection inspired Adam Rifkin’s brilliant and disturbing film, “Look,” told from the perspective of myriad security cameras (in parking lots, ATMs and shopping malls).

The U.S. mail delivered him a “love letter” from the City of Beverly Hills with a photo of him crossing a red intersection. The troubling part for him was Rifkin hadn’t even been aware that the photo had been taken; he felt invaded, violated. Out of that feeling grew a film scaffolded on the fact that the average American is photographed 170 times a day, mostly without their knowledge.

A final warning, folks, Beverly Hills still has one of these neuroses-mongering sentinels in place at Roxbury and Olympic. We can relax, all right, but not too much.

Grady Miller is the author of “A Very Grady Christmas: Three L.A. Christmases,” available on Amazon. Grady can be contacted at grady.miller@canyon-news.com.