Commuters Hold a Neighborhood Hostage : * Traffic: Natalie Levy and her daughter were fixing dinner when a driver on their Encino street jumped the curb and crashed into their kitchen.

Mothers won’t let children play in their own front yards. Bloody car crashes are the cornerstone of neighborhood gossip. And pulling out of a driveway can be a 20-minute ordeal.

Such are the realities of life in an Encino hills neighborhood where commuters looking for alternative routes over the Santa Monica Mountains have laid claim to the quaintly narrow streets that wind around homes and up to Mulholland Drive.

“It’s a neighborhood that’s become not neighborly because you feel you can’t be out front much,” said Laurie Kelson, as a motorist sped past her house on Calneva Drive. “The traffic has infringed on our quality of life.”

On one recent morning, a steady stream of commuters--some talking on cellular phones, others gulping down a hurried breakfast--screeched to a halt along Nance Street then turned quickly onto Mooncrest Drive. A few minutes later, they would be caught bumper to bumper, Rolls-Royce to Cadillac to Honda, as they waited impatiently on Hayvenhurst Avenue. Even so, they were satisfied they had avoided worse snarls on the Ventura or San Diego freeways.

“It goes on and on and on and on and on,” said Natalie Levy as she watched the cars from the driveway of her house on Mooncrest. For Levy, 53, annoyance turned to terror one evening two years ago.

Levy and her daughter were fixing dinner when a commuter turned too sharply, jumped the curb and crashed through their kitchen. The longtime resident said she yanked her daughter out of the way as the Nissan 200 SX barreled through the wall.

The Levys escaped with minor injuries, but the frightening memories linger. “Now when I hear screeching, my nerves stand on end because I think they’re coming in uninvited,” Levy said.

Indeed, almost everyone in the neighborhood has a story to tell--either of fender-benders they’ve witnessed or how the relentless traffic has changed their lives.

Carl Schatz, 72, gave up his morning walks a year ago because it was difficult to maneuver through the gridlock in front of his Hayvenhurst house. Now the founder of the Bank of Encino exercises on a treadmill.

Kelson, 44, was so worried about speeding drivers that she hired a valet service so guests would not have to cross the street to attend her daughter’s confirmation party last May.

Others have changed their work schedules to avoid rush hour. Sometimes the sacrifices are more extreme.

“I leave the house earlier,” Jack Herson, 48, said. “My wife left completely.”

Herson’s wife of 25 years, Roberta, and his youngest daughter, 14, moved to a house in Lake Arrowhead two years ago to escape the traffic near their Hayvenhurst home. The decision was made, he said, shortly after one of his daughters had a head-on collision during rush hour.

None of the harried commuters stopped to help. The accident was just another obstacle. “People were honking at her to get out of the way,” Herson said. “That’s when my wife decided she had to get out.”

His wife’s frustration had been building for a long time. “To go to the market was a major undertaking,” Herson said. “Because of the traffic, frozen food thawed out before you got home.”

Herson has remained at the Hayvenhurst house to be near the family business, but he visits his family on weekends.

Longtime residents remember a different neighborhood, before the years of screeching brakes and gridlock.

“There’s no way to describe the beauty,” said Pauline Saxon, who built her Hayvenhurst home 34 years ago.

When she and her family moved into the modest ranch-style house, Saxon’s two young children caught polliwogs in the pond across the way. Saxon said that city officials promised that a dirt road bordering her residence would never be paved.

That road became Calneva.

The traffic started in earnest about 13 years ago, and has grown worse ever since, residents say.

* BARRIER: A councilman’s plan to block rush-hour drivers splits an Encino neighborhood.