Crosses Bear Silent Witness to Dangers of Laguna Canyon Road

In silent testimony to tragedy, a dozen white crosses lined Laguna Canyon Road on Saturday, marking sites where three people were killed last week and more than 30 people have died in recent years.

Several of the small, wooden crosses stood beside a section of roadway called “Big Bend,” a long and narrow curve through high, green canyon walls where many of the fatal crashes have occurred.

Told of the crosses on Saturday, officials from the Laguna Beach Police Department and the California Department of Transportation said they would distract drivers and wouldn’t remain.

“Basically, Caltrans will go in and remove the crosses. They would consider it debris on the side of the roadway,” said Ryan Bell, a Caltrans dispatcher in Los Angeles.

The man who erected the crosses said he expected that response.

But John Lara, a 32-year-old cartoonist and T-shirt designer from Laguna Beach, said that if his crosses are removed, he probably will just put up more.

Last Sunday, three people died and a fourth was critically injured when a driver swerved onto the wrong side of the road and into an oncoming car. After that crash, which some veteran police officers called “gruesome,” Lara said he believed that he needed to make a powerful statement about the road.

“I’m just trying to bring attention to the facts of the road, of the other driver, of the dangers,” said Lara, who has lost several friends in traffic accidents on Laguna Canyon Road. The crosses wouldn’t distract drivers, he said. “I think it would put a chill in their spine to be aware of the other driver.”

Lara has erected crosses on the road several times before. He and a friend, Sean Cunningham, first put them up in 1979 at the urging of a city councilman whose friend had just been killed on the road. They did it again in 1983 after a canyon road accident in which three high school girls were killed.

Lara got the opportunity to build more crosses on Tuesday when a friend who shared his concern about the road gave him a supply of redwood stakes. That evening, behind his T-shirt shop, he went to work, spray-painting the 18-inch stakes and “banging the crosses together.”

At 9 a.m. Wednesday, Lara took his crosses to the road. He wanted commuters to see him set them up, Lara said. “I think it’s a great awakener.”

Stakes in hand, he crossed and recrossed the road, watching the cars whiz past. “Sometimes you’re thinking, ‘Boy, I could be next,’ ” Lara said.

Lara said he planted a total of 22 crosses along the road Wednesday but believes that some were removed, possibly by Caltrans workers, possibly by drivers.

Over the years some Laguna Beach businessmen and city officials haven’t liked the crosses, he said, and “people rip them out.” They think the crosses are “bad press” for Laguna Beach, that “no one will come visit this Shangri-La” if the main road to the city appears so dangerous, he said.

When he put up his latest string of crosses, Lara was working from a map of accident sites that was several years old. He knew there had been more than 22 fatalities, Lara said, adding, “I’m sure I could use a whole lumber yard of stakes.”

Also last week, Lara made a statement about the road using another medium--a political cartoon for the Laguna News-Post. In that cartoon, Lara drew a bank sign that not only tracked the day’s time and temperature but gave the latest count for “Laguna Canyon Road fatalities.”

Speaking to Drivers

With his crosses and his cartoon, Lara said he was mainly speaking to drivers, asking them to be careful. Still, he said he would like to catch the attention of public officials, too. They could make the road safer, Lara said, perhaps by widening the road, perhaps by adding a median divider to prevent head-on collisions.

For the moment, any road improvements appear to be stalled. Laguna Beach city leaders have asked for a median divider for several years, but so far, Caltrans has rejected that and has been seeking to straighten and widen the road.

In December, however, the state Coastal Commission rejected Caltrans’ widening plan, saying it would have ignored environmental concerns and would have cut too deeply into the hills. This week, prompted by last Sunday’s fatal accident, state Sen. Marian Bergeson reportedly “”said she will introduce urgency legislation to allow widening of the road as Caltrans has proposed. But on Saturday, Laguna Beach Mayor Neil J. Fitzpatrick said that he strongly opposes Bergeson’s bill because it also fails to create a median divider.

Still, Fitzpatrick said he appreciated Lara’s crosses. “I know what’s going to happen is that Caltrans is going to remove them,” the mayor said. “But as long as they’re there, it’s a good reminder to people that they’re driving on a dangerous road.”