Previous Trucker: ‘I Couldn’t Stop’

A trucker who narrowly escaped injury in an earlier accident at the same spot as Thursday’s fatal crash said Friday that the steep road is unsafe for trucks.

Now trucker Ryan Ashton and the company he works for, Industrial Parts Depot, no longer take trucks on the steep stretch of Imperial Highway, which they say was poorly engineered.

The road “almost killed two of my employees,” said Mike Haight, division manager of Industrial Parts Depot, referring to the accident in August. “And now you see what’s happened: It has killed somebody.”

City traffic engineers have said the road is safe as long as truckers follow the law. They could not be reached for comment about this case. Ultimately, Ashton and his company were cited in the accident.

The intersection of Imperial Highway and Nohl Ranch Road has long been a source of complaints by neighbors, who say speeding drivers and wayward truckers barrel down the hill each day. A public park is at the intersection, an elementary school is near it, and a high school is just down the road.

Residents plan a rally for Monday to urge city officials to stop commercial trucks from using the route.

“We don’t want trucks speeding down when our kids are here,” said parent Lissa Smith, who handed out about 200 fliers outside Imperial Elementary School. “It’s rickety in a regular car. I can’t imagine a truck with a 6,000-pound load.”

Anaheim Hills optometrist Kenneth Larkin, 53, was killed instantly Thursday when an out-of-control 28,000-pound semitruck went through a red light and slammed into his Blazer. The accident remains under investigation.

The Larkin family will attend Monday’s rally. They hope this latest accident will finally get the city’s attention.

“Hopefully something positive will come out of this,” his mother, Laverne Larkin, said.

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In August, Ashton had a nearly identical scare. He and a passenger were hauling a 25,000-pound truck, laden with steel plates, on the same stretch.

“I was under the speed limit, but I had a lot of weight on my truck, which made my brakes go out,” Ashton said. “There was no way I could stop. I couldn’t downshift any more. I pulled my horn, hit the emergency brake and I couldn’t stop at all.”

Police and Haight, the manager at Ashton’s company, credit Ashton with smart driving: He dropped his wheels into a ditch, which stopped the truck. Otherwise, Haight said, “He would have killed people as he came down that hill as well.”

“With 10 tons coming at little automobiles, the cars are going to lose every time,” Haight said.

Lowering the posted 40 mph speed limit--one he called “insane”--will not solve the problem, he said, because the steep grade and intersection have no bailout for a runaway truck.

Ashton added, “That’s a pretty small intersection that you’re coming into. There’s no way to recover. You just have to go through and hope you don’t hit anybody.”

Haight said he spoke with city officials, who blamed Ashton and the company for the crash rather than the design of the road. They cited Ashton for driving an overloaded truck--saying it was at 32,000 pounds--speeding and not maintaining brakes. The company challenged the citations on speeding and brakes but lost.

Before heading out that day, Ashton said he conducted his routine daily inspection, testing the brakes to make sure they were working. The brakes also underwent a thorough inspection two months before the accident, he said.