Highway Sign Urges Daytime Headlights

A sign urging drivers to turn on their headlights along a winding stretch of California 118 was unveiled Friday, the first of 16 such signs that highway officials hope will help cut down the number of accidents and deaths.

Planted just outside the Moorpark city limits, the sign alerts drivers that the two-lane portion of California 118 en route to Somis requires more attention than the Simi Valley Freeway section of the highway.

Others will be installed later this year.

The daylight headlight signs “keep motorists alert and aware of oncoming vehicles,” Caltrans spokeswoman Pat Reid said.

“They provide better visibility in areas where there are dips in the highway, and they reduce the amount of head-on collisions and sideswipes,” she added.

Residents along this 14.5-mile stretch of California 118 have requested that the highway be widened to four lanes, in part because of the number of crashes that have occurred on that section of highway.

Four people died late last year in two particularly gruesome accidents.

Caltrans engineers have designed a $75-million highway improvement project along California 118 between Somis and Moorpark.

But Caltrans administrators have pushed back the plan for at least 25 years because of other, higher-priority road improvement projects like the statewide seismic retrofitting jobs now underway.