Accidents Pile Up on Approach to Toll Lanes

California Highway Patrol officers see it every day, cars darting dangerously across six lanes of traffic as they drive through the Santa Ana Canyon on the Riverside Freeway.

“These walls tell stories,” CHP Officer Alvin Yamaguchi said last week, pointing to the black tire marks that scuff the concrete median.

“This barricade has been bashed so many times,” said Yamaguchi, a 16-year trooper in Orange County. “Just look around and see all of the skid marks. Skid mark. Skid mark. Skid mark.”

For Yamaguchi, the traces of tire tread tell a story of recklessness, frustration and fury. Drivers who spend too much time on the road. Drivers cutting it too close, or in too much of a hurry to get to work.

He patrols the highways of central and northern Orange County, and has investigated hundreds of accidents, including a four-car collision Wednesday on the Riverside Freeway at the entrance to the 91 Express Lanes.

Wednesday’s accident was the second time in a year that Chelsea Otero had been hit from behind while merging into the 91 Express Lanes. Otero is thankful for the toll lanes. She has used them for the past two years to shave 20 to 30 minutes from her two-hour, 38-mile morning commute from her home in Corona to the senior center she manages for the city of Cerritos.

As paramedics lifted Otero into the ambulance Wednesday morning, she asked them to stop briefly so that she could take a look around.

“I almost burst into tears; it was deja vu,” said Otero, 29. “This accident was within five feet of the one last year.”

Otero and her 8-month-old daughter suffered bumps and bruises in Wednesday’s wreck, which crumpled the rear section of the 1999 Nissan Maxima that she bought after her last car was totaled in a January 1999 accident.

“It’s very dangerous there,” Otero said. “You have people merging back and forth, and some people are just not careful.”

Although there has been wide disagreement between Caltrans and the operator of the private toll lanes over whether accident rates have increased or decreased along the Riverside Freeway, statistics used by both sides show that accident rates have risen in the westbound lanes, and the most treacherous stretch is near the entrance to the toll lanes.

For instance, the CHP reported 303 accidents last year in the mile leading up to the 91 Express Lanes, where cars must merge left to get into the toll lanes, and carpool drivers who do not want to pay must merge right. One mile farther west, where the toll lanes are separated from the free lanes, the number of accidents dropped to 39, said CHP Capt. Rick Reed.

“The lanes, where they are situated, are contributing to the high number of accidents,” Reed said. “We have a lot of accidents out there.”

That spot--the westbound entrance to the 91 Express Lanes--is particularly problematic because of its proximity to the Green River interchange, said Reed and Yamaguchi. Commuters entering the freeway at Green River have only a mile to cross six lanes of traffic to squeeze into position for the only entrance to the 91 Express Lanes.

Each workday morning between 7 and 8:30, a mile-long line of cars from Corona snakes up the hill at Green River to wait a turn to get onto the Riverside Freeway. Commuters, some of whom live in the more affordable suburbs of Corona, Chino and Norco, say it can often take more than a half-hour to get from surface streets onto the freeway.

After commuters get on the freeway, they cut loose, Yamaguchi said. In fact, the poles dividing the toll lanes from the free lanes get so banged up that they are replaced every three weeks, officials said.