Harbor Freeway Downtown Racks Up the Most Wrecks

The most dangerous section of freeway in Los Angeles County is right downtown on the Harbor where a maze of interchanges, pretzel curves and on-off ramps funnel 300,000 vehicles a day into a two-mile, six-lane concrete trench through the heart of the city.

At least twice a day, speeding, quick lane changes or sudden stops trigger crashes. Cars carom off one another, bang into guardrails or go spinning across the freeway. Too often these collisions maim and kill in a blink of an eye.

Eight people died and 135 others were injured in 663 accidents last year in these two miles of the Harbor Freeway, from Olympic Boulevard north to the Four-Level Interchange, making this the most hazardous part of the county’s freeway network, state records show.

The number of accidents on Los Angeles freeways has shot up by 50% in the last few years, clogging long stretches of these high-speed arterials that were once the pride of Southern California.

An average of 75 accidents are reported daily, up from 40 a day seven years ago. The good news is that most wrecks are fender-benders. Just over a third of the 27,729 crashes reported last year on Los Angeles freeways caused injuries. There were 221 fatal accidents last year--fewer than 1% of the total accidents.

What are the chances of getting into a wreck? The experts say that depends on where you are, what route you take and your driving skills. Luck, the time of day and sometimes the weather play a role, California Department of Transportation experts say.

A look at Caltrans statistics for 1988 shows the most dangerous sections of the Los Angeles County freeway system are clustered around the downtown area. Also high on the list of dangerous spots are several outlying interchanges, as well as a stretch of the San Diego Freeway approaching Sepulveda Pass and a dogleg on the San Bernardino Freeway east of the city center.

To learn where the most wrecks occur on Los Angeles freeways, The Times searched Caltrans computer records, sorting the accidents by location. Using the number of accidents mile per mile along the 511-mile system, the Caltrans computer listed the top 21 accident locations. Each location is a mile-long segment of freeway.

The two miles of the Harbor Freeway through downtown have a firm grip on the top two danger spots. Why? Primarily because these traffic lanes, the curling on-off ramps and the interchanges at either end were not designed to handle up to 36,000 cars an hour, experts say. The result is an over-crowded maze that is tricky to negotiate.

“It’s the sheer volume of traffic through there,” California Highway Patrolman Jon West said. “You have people swooping across lanes of traffic, cutting across the (lane) dividers, driving on the shoulder . . . sometimes it’s crazy out there.”

Driver inattention is a big problem, West said. Men drive the freeway shaving, women steer with one hand while putting on makeup with the other, some drivers read or talk on car phones, a few even engage in sexual play, he said.

West ticketed one motorist for working a crossword puzzle in traffic. “I pulled him over and wrote him for unsafe speed,” he said.

With the number of registered vehicles in Los Angeles County at 5 million and climbing, almost everyone agrees traffic is getting worse. Driving daily in the slow-and-go commute, frazzled motorists sometimes get to feeling they are in a war zone. Stalled cars and wrecks litter the center dividers or shoulders, impatient motorists dart angrily from lane to lane, motorcycles zoom down the white lines between lanes.

The problems start before the sun is up, when many motorists tune in the radio to catch the traffic news.

“That SigAlert on the southbound Glendale Freeway right at the Ventura Freeway still has the fast lanes partially blocked . . . by an overturned truck,” the morning traffic reporter warns. “Pomona Freeway, eastbound in the East L.A. Interchange, a collision in the fast lane.”

By evening on any weekday a hundred or more cars, vans, buses and trucks will have bumped, banged, burned or spun out somewhere on Los Angeles County freeways. Even airplanes crash on the freeways, snarling traffic for hours.

Few segments of freeway are more treacherous than I-5 through downtown, state records show. From the San Bernardino-I-5 Interchange south to the Long Beach (710) Interchange, there were a total of 1,028 wrecks last year in these five contiguous one-mile sections. All five segments ranked in the top 21.

The third most dangerous mile in the freeway system is in this five-mile section, where I-5 crosses 7th Street in East Los Angeles. Wrecks through this area can be deadly.

Last November, two men in a sedan died when the driver swerved left, changing lanes to avoid traffic coming down the northbound 7th Street ramp onto I-5. The car collided with a truck and trailer in the next lane. The impact spun the car into the guardrail, pinning it there. The skidding truck trailer wheels ran over the auto, crushing the two occupants, investigators reported.

That accident was just one of 246 that occurred in this mile stretch last year, 85 of them involving trucks. The chances of tangling with a truck anywhere along this five-mile stretch of I-5 are two to three times what they are on other parts of Los Angeles freeways, records show.

“I-5 has the highest truck traffic (because) it is the major truck route from San Diego to Los Angeles and . . . (north) to San Francisco,” CHP Sgt. Pat Torpey said. In addition, he said, this route is heavily used by the piggyback haulers trucking containers north on the 710 Freeway out of the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports.

“You’ve got a lot of truck traffic, got a lot of car traffic, a lot of lane changing,” Torpey said. The 710 Freeway transition onto the I-5, for example, puts truckers into the left lane of I-5. By law they must drive in the right-hand lane, so the trucks are forced to cross over through congested traffic.

“It’s a tough spot,” Torpey said. “The truckers have to count on courtesy of the drivers to open up, so they don’t have to force their way across.”

While the truck-car accident rate is high on I-5, such accidents are a problem everywhere. There are 20 to 25 major accidents involving trucks somewhere on the freeway network every week, records show. These big accidents tie up a freeway for hours, trapping thousands of motorists in massive backups.

Statistics show most accidents occur in and around heavily used interchanges that have merging lanes, tight curves and too many cars.

The East Los Angeles Interchange is the classic example. Hardly a day goes by without one or two accidents and half a dozen stalled cars or trucks somewhere in the massive structure that links four freeways: I-5, Pomona, I-10 and U.S. 101. Last year there were 856 wrecks in this bewildering, high-low, over-and-under traffic maze.

Also prone to accidents are spots where busy surface streets feed onto the freeways in sequence, one on-ramp after another, the experts say.

Time of day was once a big factor in freeway accident rates, but rush hour now lasts all day, and so do the wrecks. The worst accidents still happen late at night, when driver fatigue sets in and when alcohol and empty lanes cause motorists to increase speed.

A USC study in May revealed that 78% of freeway crashes occur on weekdays. Friday is the worst day, with an average of 3.7 wrecks on the 12-mile section of the Santa Monica Freeway studied by urban and regional planning expert Genevieve Giuliano.

“Incident rates vary widely from one location to another . . . due to factors such as land and road geometry, congestion, weather, grade and shoulder availability,” Giuliano reported.

The highest accident frequency occurs during the afternoon peak. Just over half of the wrecks involve two cars and nearly two-thirds cause no injury, she reported.

The most common wreck on any of the top 21 freeway segments is the chain reaction rear-ender, state statistics show. The causes are speed, following too close and lane changes. Well over 90% of these accidents occur during daylight, on clear days.

Rear-enders are almost impossible to avoid because it is difficult to maintain a safe distance between cars, Officer West said. Ideally, at 30 m.p.h. a driver should leave 45 feet of space--four car lengths--in front, but such a gap is quickly filled by lane-changing motorists in a hurry to get two cars ahead.

“If you’re following one car length behind at 25 miles an hour, you’re too close,” West said. “In a panic stop, you’ll hit the car in front. You can’t avoid it.”

Even when you keep your distance and stop in time, there is always danger from behind. Nothing is more frightening than to be stopped in traffic and in the rear-view mirror see a car or, worse, a truck bearing down.

That is what happened to Rafael Rodriguez, 28, of Los Angeles shortly before noon one day last year while he was headed north on the San Diego Freeway near National Avenue. Traffic had come to a stop, and as Rodriguez glanced in his mirror he saw a semi-truck towing two trailers bearing down on him at 55 m.p.h., the CHP reported. There was no time to get out of the way.

The truck driver hit the brakes and went into a skid, the report said. The 18-wheeler slammed into Rodriguez’s car, sending it spinning. Then, like a bowling ball, the big rig plowed into several other cars, knocking them flying. Before it was over, six cars had been damaged and two people were injured. The CHP cited the truck driver for following too close and driving too fast.

The wreck occurred in January, 1988, on a two-mile section between the San Diego-Santa Monica Interchange and Santa Monica Boulevard. Before the year was out there were 376 more crashes on these contiguous one-mile segments of the 405.

Farther north, where the 405 goes through Sepulveda Pass, there is a straight, steep mile of freeway that had 158 wrecks last year.

“I call that whole stretch . . . poop-out hill,” said KNX radio traffic reporter Bill Keene, who contends that stalled, overheating cars and trucks cause the congestion and wrecks. “We have a lot of problems in the pass,” Keene said. “Say a dump truck’s overloaded, trying to get over the hill, things like that. When something goes down in Sepulveda Pass, you’ve got a major problem. . . . There are no alternative routes.”

There is another trouble spot farther north on the 405, where it connects with the Ventura Freeway. The number of accidents on the Ventura going through this interchange jumped to 202 last year, up from 145.

On the San Bernardino Freeway east from downtown there are two trouble spots. The first, on a bend east of the 710 Interchange in Alhambra, there were 177 accidents last year. CHP officials say just the dogleg bend in the freeway, combined with the start of high occupancy vehicle lanes, may be creating enough changes in the traffic flow to cause problems. The second bad spot is the San Bernardino Freeway Interchange with the 605, where there were 194 accidents last year.

Highway engineers and safety experts say that, despite these accident statistics, freeways are still the safest places to drive, when compared to two- and four-lane highways, county roads and urban streets.

They point out that the number of fatalities on freeways is less than one per 100 million miles driven. Divided four-lane expressways produce three fatalities per 100 million miles; on two-lane roads the rate goes up to five deaths, said Charles Pivetti, Caltrans safety engineer.

“Freeways have very low death and accident rates when compared with non-freeway routes,” Pivetti said. The reasons, he said, are that vehicles travel in the same direction on freeways and at similar speeds, resulting in fewer chances to collide.

Why are some spots more prone to accidents than others?

“Any time you have a location where people have to change lanes or do anything out of the ordinary . . . you have an opportunity for an accident,” Sgt. Torpey said. “The driver’s attitude is going to be the primary factor in most accidents. Mechanical conditions . . . rarely cause an accident. It’s usually the drivers.”

Number of Accidents 1. 389 2. 274 3. 246 4. 232 5. 226 6. 211 7. 208 8. 206 9. 202 10. 200 11. 200 12. 195 13. 194 14. 177 15. 174 16. 165 17. 163 18. 158 19. 158 20. 154 21. 151