Long Beach’s downtown area is notorious for many one-way streets. This driver wrongly assumed 4th St was one of them.
Long Beach-area driver and Redditor /u/AWD_OWNZ_U shared a case of instant justice from earlier in April (Apr 26, 2026) to the /r/ConvenientCop subreddit, showing a driver, too confident for their own good, assuming a two-way street was, in fact, just a one-way, causing them to turn directly into traffic going the wrong way.
Unfortunately for them, LBPD was right behind them, and within seconds, they were pulled over.
Check out the case of Convenient Cop below with the original Reddit thread linked here.
The incident happened in Downtown Long Beach at the intersection of E 4th St. and Long Beach Blvd. (Exact location on Google Maps linked here.)
As the dashcam shows, OP is pointed westbound on E 4th St., ready to go across the aforementioned intersection.
And, as this birds-eye view of that area shows, drivers headed southbound towards the Beach encounter a mix of one-way and two-way streets with, for the uninitiated, no particular pattern.
A driver in a Honda CR-V can be seen turning confidently onto 4th like it was a one-way, except it wasn’t, and had OP been in the right lane, that CR-V would’ve hit him head-on.
Thankfully, OP was in the left-turn lane, and a patrolling LBPD officer in their interceptor lit up the confused driver within seconds.
“Wow, that one was basically instant. Great stuff,” the top comment from /u/BZK_QRay reads, pointing out how fast the response from police was.
“That driver did make that turn almost 100% convincingly. like no middle lane hesitate, just straight up sharp turn into as we know the wrong lane… the whole thing happened and wrapped up in seconds is kinda cool,” /u/WilliamJamesMyers added.
” And, btw. Lucky OP was making a turn? The middle lane was a perfect spot, the cop and the wrong turn guy.”
In California, driving the wrong way on a roadway is typically charged as a moving violation and usually carries a fine that can easily end up several hundred dollars once court fees and penalties are added. Most standard wrong-way violations are assessed 1 point on your driving record, but it can escalate if it’s considered reckless driving. If it’s charged as reckless driving instead, penalties can be much harsher, including higher fines, possible jail time, and 2 points on your record.
