Because it's not as dense. But it still has lots and lots of lovely neighborhoods and places to walk. You just need to drive between them. The view of L.A. from Mulholland Drive at night made me realize how truely immense L.A. is.
edit: according to Google. "L.A. area" is 503 sq miles. "London area" is 607 sq miles. Interesting.
It's giving you the city of Los Angeles there. If you do "greater L.A. area" it gives two numbers, the L.A. Metro area at 4,850 square miles and the wider metro region at 33,954 square miles.
I don't know enough about either region to make a useful comparison, but I think the area for L.A. has to include more than just the city of L.A. proper.
The figure for the wider metro region probably includes a ton of undeveloped land in the LA mountains all the way out to Palmdale/Lancaster, which will skew things quite a bit since those areas are very low density.
I would definitely include neighboring cities in the LA basin when discussing LA as a whole though. The cities in the SGV, south bay, and gateway cities are very much a part of LA even if they're not within city limits.
I've only lived in Los Angeles for ~6 months, but my understanding of what people accept as the "greater LA area" goes as far east as Covina, includes Santa Monica, down to Long Beach, and up to Santa Clarita. These are all rough estimations, depending on personal preference (which I've exposed here, I suppose), but it gives you a sense of what one might consider in trying to figure out where LA ends, and where the rest of Southern CA begins.
If you include down to Irvine, then what you're describing is the "studio zone" or "thirty mile zone" (TMZ), where standard studio rates apply to film production as set by unions.
Drunk driving has always been an issue in most of America. It's not taken seriously. In Houston there was regularly horrific DUI deaths and people wouldn't bat an eyelash (several times there were cars driven by drunks onto the freeway *on the wrong side. Bam, four killed. Doesn't make top story on the local news).
I'm sure it's a big issue but I don't think it's any worse than most other large American metros. In fact, I imagine it may be less of an issue here. LA does actually have a somewhat functional rail/bus system and some pockets of very walkable neighborhoods that also tend to have an abundance of nightlife.
I think it has gotten better since Uber/Lyft came about as well as younger people not being hesitant to take the subway (now open until 2).
Terrible driving in general is still the same - no signals, double-parking without hesitation, general craziness. On big holidays, there are a lot of drunk driving checkpoints but, overall, very little to no traffic enforcement.
Hit-and-runs are a really big problem.
I think the city is going through some growing pains as there as there are more pedestrians and cyclists on the road. If you are in those categories, you have to be very, very aware.
As a comparison, I was much more worried about drunk drivers when living in a rural area. Also, a recent visit to Santa Fe I saw at least 2-3 clearly drunk drivers, which my friends said is a huge problem there.
edit: according to Google. "L.A. area" is 503 sq miles. "London area" is 607 sq miles. Interesting.