Fame, Wealth and Death on Sunset Blvd. : Traffic: Palisades and Bel-Air residents seek to halt fatal crashes on the narrow and curving stretch of roadway.

It is a famous street that crosses famous neighborhoods filled with famous people. But a portion of Sunset Boulevard is becoming infamous as a road of horrors to area residents.

The curves are too sharp, the lanes too narrow, the car speeds much too high. Those ingredients form an often-fatal mix. Shortly before Christmas, two women were killed in a head-on collision on Sunset near Bentley Avenue, the latest in a series of auto deaths along the roadway in recent years.

Some of the crashes have been so terrible they’ve never been forgotten. In 1976, a speeding car spun out of control at a hairpin turn on Sunset and Evans Road, plowing into a carful of students from Palisades High School. Three of the students were killed.

Last year, a group of Pacific Palisades residents helped push through a number of city improvement projects aimed at taming the dangerous blind curves and turn lanes along the serpentine boulevard. And recently, a group of Bel-Air residents, who usually prefer to settle their community problems in-house, felt compelled to seek public assistance in their battle to make Sunset Boulevard, between the 405 Freeway and Veteran Avenue, safer.

Chris Stone and other members of the Bel-Air Assn. will meet tonight with Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, traffic officials from the West Los Angeles police division and city traffic engineers to air their concerns.

“I’m terrified of this corner,” said Bentley Avenue resident Barbara Bauer. “You can imagine crossing this intersection when you have two small children in the car. It’s just an awful feeling.”

A few moments at the corner of Bentley and Sunset recently showed why it has become a place where residents fear to tread. More than two dozen cars on Sunset, unable to negotiate the curve at high speed, veered briefly across the dividing line. Dozens of others were forced to hit their brakes to stay in their lane while going down the slope.

When the Pacific Palisades residents organized to get something done about the roadway, officials suggested adding more stoplights, modifying several roadway curves and widening lanes along several sections of the street.

Over the next several years, up to $10 million in improvements will be added along the eight-mile stretch of Sunset west of the San Diego Freeway. But Bel-Air residents maintain that similar projects must be approved for the section of Sunset that crosses their neighborhood.

Police acknowledge that Sunset Boulevard is fraught with traffic hazards and has been the scene of numerous fatalities. It also poses enforcement problems. Capt. Vance Proctor, head of the West Los Angeles Police Department traffic division, said the curving roadway makes it difficult for police to keep speeding drivers in sight, and the heavy congestion makes it difficult to apprehend lawbreakers. A double yellow line is all that separates east and westbound traffic, creating numerous opportunities for head-on collisions.

“Sunset has always been a dangerous stretch; we have had some very tragic accidents there,” Proctor said. “It’s an area where the speed limit has to be carefully adhered to because of the curves and such. But many drivers don’t seem to realize that.”

Proctor said that it’s too early to say what safety measures are needed to correct the hazards. But he said that like most problem areas, the best way to address it is through “enforcement, education and engineering.”

Residents say they’ll be happy with any improvements--as long as they are done quickly.