Area Residents Say Coast Highway Speed Limit Too High : South Laguna Collision Kills Dana Point Man

A Dana Point man was killed Thursday morning in South Laguna on a stretch of Coast Highway that some residents say is posted at too high a rate of speed.

Hamilton Millard, 64, was killed when his van struck a pickup truck near the intersection of Coast Highway and Vista del Sol and overturned, the California Highway Patrol said. The driver of the pickup, Isidro Ramos Heredia, 24, of Santa Ana, and a passenger, Macrino Rosas, 24, were treated for injuries at South Coast Medical Center and released.

Millard was driving south on the highway when his van collided, almost head-on, with Heredia’s truck, which was making a left turn onto Vista del Sol from the northbound Coast Highway. CHP Officer Jerry Graul said the cause of the accident is still under investigation.

Lower Limit Sought

For southbound drivers, the speed limit on the highway changes from 45 to 50 m.p.h. at Vista del Sol, and for the last few years some area residents have been trying to get the speed limit reduced to 35 m.p.h. as development has increased the population density.

“We of South Laguna have been really frustrated for years about this situation,” said Allen Hubbard, who lives nearby. “Today I saw a man die in front of my eyes in an especially gruesome fashion in an accident that shouldn’t have happened.”

Hubbard helped form a group four years ago that unsuccessfully tried to have the speed limit reduced to 35 m.p.h. from Laguna Beach at least to Crown Valley Parkway, if not all the way to Dana Point. Under present conditions, Hubbard said, people driving south along Coast Highway “treat it like a freeway.”

Dr. Thomas Mauro, whose office is near the intersection and who was called to the scene of Thursday’s collision, agreed that “it’s a frequent site of accidents,” including one in which a car came to rest against the wall of his office. The main problems, Mauro said, are “people trying to beat the light” and “making a turn in the face of oncoming traffic.”

Officer Sees No Problem

However, Graul, who was the investigating officer at the scene, said that “we haven’t had that many accidents there. If everybody would drive 45 we wouldn’t have accidents like this. I don’t think there’s any problem with the speed limit there.”

Speed limits on state highways such as Coast Highway are determined by the state Department of Transportation. A Caltrans official said Thursday that the department makes checks from time to time on posted speed limits if there are indications of unsafe conditions. But the official said he had no immediately available information about any studies of speed limits in the South Laguna area.

The Orange County Fire Department, which dispatches paramedics to accident scenes, said Thursday that its current records show no unusual number of injury accidents on the stretch of Coast Highway from Three Arch Bay to Crown Valley Parkway.

Pat Antrim, a spokesman for the department, said a search of paramedic accident calls for the months of June and July showed two calls to that part of Coast Highway.