Letters : Speeding on Palisades Drive

Add Palisades Drive as a death trap to a “Scenic Road Stirs Impulse to Speed” you reported on Feb. 3.

Some time after midnight on Feb. 1, two girls in their early 20s, racing the brother of one of those killed, lost control of their speeding car, hit the curb and literally sailed into the retaining wall of a flood-control ditch along the 2 1/2-mile-wide canyon road. The impact flipped the car into a pool of water which may have caused death to the unconscious girls by drowning. The young man in the rear seat, as of this writing, was fighting for his life.

The tragedy will haunt the brother. He was in the lead, and not aware of the accident. How long the car was immersed in the water is not known. The security guard for the Palisades Highlands discovered the wreck as he took a periodic check ride through the canyon to Sunset Boulevard.

This is not the first tragic accident on this fast mountain road.

Rumble-strip implants have been installed near the entrance into the highlands, but it doesn’t slow them down. They still zip through the residential area which have no stop signs, stoplights, crosswalks or other entreaties to slow them down. Nor have we been able to move the West L.A. traffic engineer to install safety devices. Technical reasons overcome common sense.

The recommendations for the danger spots on Sunset Boulevard, from Bel-Air to the Pacific Coast Highway, are all in order. We need to add police, radar-control cars. (After a continued community protest, the Palisades was promised one patrol car on a 24-hour continual basis. I trust it is in effect. Councilman Marvin Braude as Chairman of the Police Committee needs to insist.)

And the “warning” rumble-strip implants haven’t worked, at least on Palisades Drives. The time may have come to build road bumps similar to those on private streets where one wishes to slow down traffic. That will slow down a car, or send it to the shop for new shock absorbers.

Through this letter, I continue my cry as chairman of the 14 homeowner associations in the Palisades Highlands for the safety aids we desperately need within the community area. None of the streets are safe for crossing because of the speeding traffic.

HYMAN HAVES

Chairman

Pacific Palisades Highland Homeowners Assns.