More Motorists Falling Victim to ‘Desert Driving’ : Accidents: Nineteen people have died on Antelope Valley roads this year. If the rate continues, deaths will be up more than 30% by the end of the year.

They become pins on a map, photo captions, fuzzy nightmare images of twisted metal and shattered lives.

The 19 fatal traffic accidents in the Antelope Valley this year already equal almost half the yearly average of 41 for the past three years, according to California Highway Patrol statistics. If they continue at that rate, the number of fatal accidents will be up more than 30% by the end of the year.

There is no single explanation for the rise, according to CHP officers. Contributing factors include the growing number of residents and drivers, the wearying effect of long-distance commutes, an increase in drunk driving and a tendency to drive too fast in desert areas that are more heavily traveled than they appear. And because the accidents are spread out over a wide area, there is a limit to what can be done to prevent them, officers said.

Statistics indicate a continuing rise in fatal accidents and in accidents overall in the Antelope Valley in recent years. Accidents resulting in injury in 1989 were up 9% over the average for the previous three years. Total accidents went up 7% and drunk driving-related crashes went up 14%.

The increases outpace by a considerable margin the average increases for the state and the CHP’s Inland Division, where injury, drunk driving and total accidents were down slightly or remained about the same. The Inland Division consists of the Antelope Valley and far-flung communities including Needles, Bishop, Riverside, San Bernardino and Victorville.

In part, law enforcement officials attribute the phenomenon to the engine that is driving up most statistics in the area: growth.

“More drivers, more accidents,” said CHP Officer Miguel Siordia.

The number of average daily traffic trips in the 1,600-square-mile CHP sector has increased from 37,000 to 78,000 during the past three years, officials said, a period in which population and housing growth rates in Palmdale and Lancaster have been among the state’s highest.

But the increase also has roots in the local geography and the particular kind of growth the region has experienced, as the semi-rural high desert has been transformed into a bustling bedroom community. “Desert driving,” as the tradition of hitting the accelerator in wide-open spaces is known, has taken on new and dangerous aspects with urbanization.

There are about 40,000 commuters in the valley’s estimated population of 200,000. The great majority drive to jobs in the San Fernando Valley, downtown Los Angeles and even as far as Long Beach. As daily pre-dawn traffic jams on the southbound Antelope Valley Freeway indicate, these harrowing 100-mile journeys require getting up as early as 4 a.m. and spending up to four hours a day behind the wheel.

The trend produces fast, aggressive and inattentive driving, officials said, with lonely roads turning suddenly into crash courses. Consider the case of Maria Guadalupe Acevedo of Palmdale.

On Thursday, Acevedo suffered bruises and cuts in an accident that took place on the Antelope Valley Freeway near Agua Dulce, according to the CHP. She was driving 55 m.p.h., which appears to be the legal limit only in theory on that freeway. Acevedo tried to switch lanes to allow a faster-moving car to pass, was forced off the road by another rapidly approaching car and then careened down a 300-foot embankment. The other two cars did not stop.

“People are in a hurry,” Siordia said. “A lot of people out there I’ve talked to” gear their time when they leave the house figuring that driving 70 miles an hour, they’re going to get to work on time. “People are fatigued. The mentality is, ‘I just want to get home.’ People have to drive defensively. They have to make sure they are in a condition to drive.”

Three of the fatal crashes this year have occurred on the Antelope Valley Freeway between Palmdale Boulevard and Soledad Canyon Road, a stretch where the freeway curves out of the mountains into the valley. That area tends to have wind gusts, but Siordia said wind was not a factor in the crashes. The CHP has increased patrols in that area and hopes to increase the number of officers in the Antelope Valley soon.

But for the most part, there are no “blood alleys” where accidents are concentrated, a fact that further frustrates enforcement efforts, officials said.

“It’s spread out like a shotgun blast. There doesn’t seem to be a specific pattern,” said CHP Lt. Dick Stockham.

Similarly, Sheriff’s Sgt. Joseph Dymerski of the Antelope Valley Station’s traffic division, which patrols incorporated areas, said his department has not been able to pinpoint clusters of serious accidents.

Stockham and Dymerski said many of this year’s fatal accidents have occurred in the desolate stretches of desert road east and west of Palmdale and Lancaster. Stockham described one accident in March in which a woman driving 55 m.p.h. on Avenue J in the desert near 200th Street East swerved into the oncoming lane to avoid a plastic chair in the road, killing two riders on an oncoming motorcycle.

“They happen out in the middle of nowhere,” Stockham said. “How do you enforce against that?”

People tend to drive faster than they should in rural areas, particularly residents from urban areas, law enforcement officers said.

“These roads were not designed for 65 m.p.h.,” Dymerski said. “You’re out there by yourself just buzzing along, you don’t have telephone poles or anything to gauge your speed by.”

A number of the accidents occurred when cars drifted onto dirt shoulders or center dividers and drivers overreacted by braking or swerving too hard, losing control of their cars, Siordia said.

Other serious crashes in outlying areas have been caused by drivers failing to stop at isolated intersections because they either did not see or ignored stop signs.

High speeds increase the danger and the intensity of the accidents. As one law enforcement official put it, “The car crashes look like plane crashes.”

Drunk driving is on the rise in the Antelope Valley as well. It was a factor in one-third of this year’s fatal accidents. One particularly ironic and tragic case this month drew an unusual amount of publicity because it involved Adam DeJesus, son of Marcy DeJesus, executive director of the Mothers Against Drunk Driving chapter in Los Angeles.

DeJesus died in a crash on California 18 near the San Bernardino County Line when a motorist attempted to pass a car in the oncoming lane and plowed into the Honda carrying DeJesus and a passenger, who was seriously injured. Darshan Grewal, who had been convicted twice of drunk driving, has been charged with murder in the case.

Although the DeJesus case is among the auto fatality cases that can be attributed to specific causes, Stockham said the increases in drunk driving and the number of drivers in the region do not fully explain this year’s grim numbers.

“I wish I had a reason,” he said.