Thousand Oaks Intersection Worst in County

As one of the safest cities in the United States, Thousand Oaks has very few mean streets. But it does have one mean intersection.

There was an accident about every two weeks at Hillcrest Drive and Moorpark Road in 1998, giving Thousand Oaks the dubious distinction of having the most dangerous intersection of any city in the county that year.

But Oxnard, owner of 10 of the county’s top 15 most dangerous intersections, claimed the next five spots.

The intersection of Ventura Road and West 5th Street in Oxnard was ranked No. 2 with 26 accidents involving rear-enders, running red lights or hitting fixed objects, among other things.

The most dangerous intersections had from 20 to 29 accidents in a year.

Those numbers are not exorbitant, said Dave Cockrill, spokesman for the California Highway Patrol, which collects the statistics from the county’s 10 cities.

“It’s only about two collisions a month. I was a little surprised Oxnard came up so often, but I don’t think it’s more unsafe than the rest of the county,” he said.

Cockrill speculated that Oxnard’s streets may be carrying a higher volume of cars than they were originally intended to hold.

But Oxnard officials said the numbers may have more to do with Oxnard’s growth than anything else.

“The bottom line is you have to look at the makeup of the surrounding areas and see if there has been development or if traffic has been diverted onto those roads from other roads,” said Ken Klopman, traffic coordinator for the city.

Joseph Genovese, Oxnard’s traffic engineer, said he was surprised that so many accidents occurred at Ventura Road and West 5th Street.

“It is a very large intersection, about 47,000 cars a day, and it has two through lanes in each direction, double left-turn pockets and left-turn arrows in all directions,” he said. “You can’t make a safer situation with every movement protected by its own signal. It’s bizarre people were still getting into accidents.”

To address the problem, Oxnard recently relocated signals to place them closer to traffic.

Genovese said increasing signal visibility at the intersection was the only thing the city could think of to fix the problem, but officials will need to wait for 1999 statistics before they can judge the success of the improvements.

While no city is proud to have any sort of traffic problem, across the county, accidents are fewer and intersections are safer than they were five years ago, according to Cockrill.

In 1994, the worst intersection in the county was Channel Islands Boulevard and Saviers Road with 36 accidents. By 1998, the number had fallen to 25, tying for the No. 3 spot with C Street and Wooley Road.

Oxnard decided to tackle that and other traffic problems a few months ago by extending the duration of yellow lights from 4 to 4.3 seconds on roads where traffic travels more than 40 mph. The intersection of C and Wooley was one of those.

“A car can travel a long distance in 0.3 seconds,” Genovese said, noting that the changes were made on the recommendation of the state Department of Transportation.

“When the light turns yellow, people make a decision about how hard to brake and still feel comfortable,” he said. “This allows them a longer deceleration time.”

Besides having a longer yellow, the intersection at C and Wooley has a 1.2-second period where every light is red to allow straggler vehicles to get through. And the train tracks running down the median of Wooley make the intersection larger so cars need more time to get through, Genovese said.

The intersection tied for No. 3, Channel Islands Boulevard and Saviers Road, underwent renovation in August 1998 to help relieve the congestion of vehicles turning right.

“That intersection has a lot of pedestrian activity, and drivers that would want to turn right would wait for the pedestrians to cross and that would back up traffic,” he said.

In August, the city built a 200-foot right-turn lane on Channel Islands Boulevard to ease the backup.

At the No. 4-ranked spot, Ventura Road and 9th Street, 10 of the 24 accidents were rear-enders and five were sideswipes from people running red lights, according to Genovese.

He said that in the next five to 10 years, Ventura Road will be widened to accommodate three southbound lanes to match the three existing northbound lanes.

That intersection also had the duration of its yellow lights extended.

Tied for No. 4 was C Street and Channel Islands with 24 accidents.

“We noticed we were having higher than average collisions at night and that led us to improve lighting,” Genovese said.

In August 1998, the city added two additional street lights.

“One of the things that happens is people assume they can turn left at the end of the yellow and the car approaching doesn’t stop. Lighting can help because people don’t take as many chances,” he said.

Camarillo had one intersection in the Top 15--Daily Drive and Las Posas Road--coming in at No. 5 with 22 incidents.

Tom Fox, traffic engineer for the city of Camarillo, said 40,000 cars use that intersection a day and that in 1998, there were three different construction projects.

“There was definitely an increase in ‘98, but now that we’ve had improvements, we feel it’s operating very well,” he said, adding that so far this year, the intersection has only had three accidents.

“If it continues like that, we will be operating at an extremely low accident rate,” he said.

So what about that No. 1 intersection in Thousand Oaks?

“There really isn’t anything unusual about that intersection,” said John Helliwell, traffic engineer for the city. “We’ve taken care of collision factors with engineering improvements; now it is up to the drivers who drive.”

Helliwell said the intersection at Hillcrest Drive and Moorpark Road is of average size with two through lanes and turn lanes in each direction.

“I wouldn’t say the traffic is particularly high. Sometimes you can estimate why people are having accidents and sometimes you can’t because it’s just human behavior.

“There is nothing wrong with that intersection.”

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Intersections and Accidents

The following intersections in Ventura County had the most accidents in 1998:

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Intersection No. accidents Hillcrest Drive and Moorpark Road, Thousand Oaks 29 Ventura Road and West 5th Street, Oxnard 26 C Street and Wooley Road, Oxnard 25 Channel Islands Boulevard and Saviers Road, Oxnard C Street and Channel Islands Boulevard, Oxnard 24 Ventura Road and 9th Street, Oxnard

Daily Drive and Las Posas Road, Camarillo 22 Auto Center Drive and Rose Avenue, Oxnard 21 Channel Islands Boulevard and Ventura Road, Port Hueneme Rose Avenue and Wooley Road, Oxnard Thousand Oaks and Westlake boulevards, Thousand Oaks Carmen and Ponderosa drives, Camarillo 20 Channel Islands Boulevard and J Street, Oxnard Gonzalez Road and Rice Avenue, Oxnard Lockwood Street and Rose Avenue, Oxnard

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Source: California Highway Patrol