Ortega Signs to Urge Lights On in Daytime

A series of signs which officials hope will save lives will go up Monday on Ortega Highway, a road in south Orange County where fatal accidents were quadruple the state average for what is classified as a “two-lane rural road.”

The signs will urge drivers to turn on their headlights during daylight hours “to make them more aware of each other,” said Moon Kim, associate transportation engineer for the California Department of Transportation.

He said the scheme has been used in other parts of the state, including Laguna Canyon Road, and “has proved very promising in reducing such accidents as head-on collisions.”

Ortega, which runs from the Interstate 5 Freeway in San Juan Capistrano to Lake Elsinore in Riverside County, carries about 3,700 vehicles per day, according to Officer Ken Daily of the California Highway Patrol. Statistics show that in 1984, there were 175 major accidents resulting in 150 injuries and 12 deaths over the 25-mile route.

Corrective Measures Difficult

Caltrans officials said the figures are four times the average for two-lane rural roads, and corrective measures such as widening the roadway over its full length would be difficult and costly because of the mountainous terrain.

Full-time patrolling of the highway is considered unfeasible because of a shortage of CHP manpower and demands for services on the more heavily traveled freeways in the south county, Daily said.

Kim said the signs will be erected starting about 2 1/2 miles east of the I-5 Freeway and ending about 14 miles away at the Orange County-Riverside County line. He said he expects the signs soon will be duplicated in Riverside County, which is in another Caltrans jurisdiction.

“The whole idea of daytime headlights is to make people watch out, to think twice, to make them more aware of each other, and by doing those things, to maybe make them avoid trouble,” Kim said.

Daytime Headlight Program

In Laguna Beach, Police Chief Neil Purcell said no comparative statistics have been kept on the accident rate on Laguna Canyon Road since the daytime headlight program began more than a year ago.

“But our officers say there has been a noticeable reduction in the number of serious accidents,” he said. “It seems to be a psychological thing, making drivers more aware, and we have found that between 65 and 70% of the motorists do respond to the signs.

“And fewer and fewer of them are forgetting to turn their lights off and ending up with dead batteries after they park downtown.”