Unexpected Risks Face Motorists Off Beaten Path

When the Chevy Blazer carrying actor Pierce Brosnan’s teenage son turned onto the narrow, winding asphalt road a few minutes before it plunged 200 feet into a canyon, the driver passed a boldly lettered sign warning: “Private Road. Not Maintained. Use at Your Own Risk.”

The gray Blazer was traveling along one of many unregulated, and potentially dangerous, private roads that cross the Santa Monica Mountains.

There are no safety standards for these roads, authorities said, because they are built on private land and are used mostly by area property owners. But some, like Dume Canyon Mountainway, site of the Brosnan crash, are well-known, if little used, shortcuts through the sparsely inhabited canyons near Malibu.

“Many of them are very dangerous roads,” said Mark Pestrella, district engineer with the Los Angeles County Department of Building and Safety.

Dume Canyon Mountainway provides a link of private roads between Kanan Dume Road with Latigo Canyon Road.

It is a bumpy and overgrown one-lane stretch of worn asphalt that runs more than two miles into Ramirez Canyon. There is no gate blocking public entry to the private road and there are no guardrails.

Like other private roads, Dume Canyon Mountainway is not publicly maintained or inspected. Nor do police patrol for traffic or other violations.

“If it is private property, you can do what you want with it,” said an engineer with the county Department of Public Works. “It’s just like your driveway.”

By contrast, public roads are inspected by county workers at least once a month and after rainfall that could cause rocks and soil to obstruct the roadway, said John Walker, also of the county Department of Public Works.

The county tracks public complaints and accidents on public roads and uses the data to make adjustments, such as installing new warning signs, to improve safety, Walker said.

Because private roads are unregulated and sometimes built without permits, no one knows how many miles of roadways have been carved into the mountainside on private property.

Some private access roads were built decades ago before codes were strictly enforced, Pestrella said. Now, property owners must win approval of both the county and California Coastal Commission to grade an access path in most of the Santa Monica Mountains in county jurisdiction.

To obtain a county permit, most property owners must build paved access roads that meet Los Angeles County Fire Department’s width and grading specifications, authorities said. The roads must be at least 20 feet wide, Fire Capt. James Jordan said, to accommodate 25-ton trucks responding to brush and structure fires.

Those specifications apply only to roads leading to homes and other structures.

Dume Canyon Mountainway, Jordan said, is exempt because there are no structures on or near the roadway, which officials believe was paved in the late 1970s without a permit.

Once approved and built, though, private roads are not inspected for public safety.

Out of concern for trespassing, the California Highway Patrol, which has jurisdiction in the unincorporated area near Malibu, doesn’t patrol private roads. They enter private property only in response to injury accidents or when drunk driving is suspected, CHP Officer Lydia Martinez said.

That’s what happened early April 22, when CHP officers were called to the scene of a car crash involving the younger Brosnan. One of the passengers injured in the accident used a cell phone to call for help.

Brosnan’s 16-year-old son, Sean, was riding in the gray 1982 Blazer with five other young people about 3:45 a.m. when their vehicle ran off the road and plunged nearly 200 feet into a canyon, Martinez said. Sean was seriously injured.

The driver, James P. Hall, 19, of Malibu, mistakenly identified by authorities as Sean’s cousin, was arrested on suspicion of felony drunk driving, Martinez said, because an injury resulted.

Hall’s blood alcohol level was .09, she said. The legal limit is .08 for an adult.

“I think the main problem in this case is alcohol-related,” Martinez said, downplaying potentially dangerous road conditions.

According to Martinez, CHP officers cannot recall responding to an injury or alcohol-related accident on a private road in the Santa Monica Mountains in the last two years.

At the time of the accident, Hall told officers that he swerved to avoid a rock that had fallen onto the road. But Martinez said CHP found no evidence to support his claim.

The CHP cannot monitor teens who drink illegally and drive on remote canyon roads, Lt. Andria Witmer said. “We are not their mommies and daddies,” she said.