Truly, I did not think we made 'em that dim any more.

I was driving out of a Los Angeles hillside neighborhood today and I stopped for a red light. The driver of the car in front of me was smoking, languidly hanging his cigarette hand out of the window between drags.

The wind was up and dry leaves were stirring in the street. I watched his hand, his cigarette, the way the fellow in the crow's nest on the Titanic must have watched the looming iceberg.

And then he did it. He dropped the burning cigarette butt in the street.

No other word for it: I was gobsmacked. The radio was reporting more houses, more miles of land chewed up by fire. The sun was caramelized by the haze of smoke. The ash was still blowing in wisps off my windshield wipers. And this man flicked his lighted cigarette out of his car.

I leaped out of my car and hurried to stomp on the smoldering butt, grinding it out in the street. ''Are you nuts?'' I asked him. ''The state is burning up around here, and you toss out a lighted cigarette? That's how these fires start! Be careful!''

I half-expected a ''Geez, I'm sorry, I just wasn't thinking.'' Instead, I got a torrent of obscene abuse. Then the light changed.

I called the cops to report it, but they said they couldn't do anything. Yes, it's a misdemeanor, but they had to see it happen.

Something of the same happened to me in February, in stopped traffic on the Golden State Freeway — a man dropped his burning cigarette out of his truck. When I told him that he'd get a ticket if the CHP saw him, he assured me that they'd let him off — he was a sheriff's deputy.

I wonder about that deputy now. Is he out directing traffic as people evacuate their smoky neighborhoods? Does he live in Canyon Country or Santa Clarita, and is his own home threatened by fire?

And what do you suppose he'd do if it turned out some idiot tossing away a glowing cigarette butt had started the fire that burned down his house?