Witness to Fatal Crash Presses for Safer Road

Mark Cagnacci wasn’t even supposed to be on Victoria Avenue that morning.

The 37-year-old insurance agent was on his way to a business meeting at an Oxnard hotel -- the wrong one, he later found out -- when he came upon the fiery car wreck that killed two children and injured three adults.

Cagnacci’s attempt to save one of the children, 7-month-old Jacqueline Lopez, proved futile. But the nightmare experience spurred him to action.

Addressing the Ventura County Board of Supervisors last week, Cagnacci demanded that concrete medians be placed along the winding S-curve south of Gonzales Road where the accident happened.

“I performed CPR on [a] baby for 20 minutes and I still lost her,” Cagnacci told the supervisors. “It is you people behind the dais who can prevent this from happening again.... We don’t need to study this thing to death. It needs to get done.”

California Highway Patrol officials said they are still investigating the cause of the Feb. 4 accident, which also killed Jacqueline’s 2-year-old brother, David, and burned their mother, 21-year-old Francine Lopez.

Two women in the other car were hurt but are expected to recover. Witnesses said Lopez, who was heading north, lost control of her car for unknown reasons and crossed into southbound lanes.

As part of its report, the CHP’s Ventura office could make recommendations on whether the road needs medians or other safety enhancements, Officer Rex Mohun said.

One factor they will look at is whether accidents are disproportionately high for that stretch of road, he said. According to state records, there have been 10 fatalities and 194 injuries on the road since 1992.

“When someone loses control, there is really nothing to stop them from going into the opposing lanes,” Mohun said. “Some of our officers who have been here a long time are unhappy that there is no barrier there.”

But county officials say it’s not that simple.

Concrete medians could prevent vehicles from straying onto the wrong side of the road. But installing them could also present a new set of problems, such as crashes into the medians, said Butch Britt, deputy director of public works.

“Do you put fixed objects in the middle of a roadway?,” he said. “Caltrans and other agencies have criteria that we review, and up to this point we have come to the conclusion that that would not be the right thing to do.”

Still, the county continually reviews the safety of roads and will look again at Victoria Avenue, Britt said. The Gonzales Road intersection closest to the accident site handles 37,000 cars a day, he said.

“It’s gone from a somewhat rural area to one that is quite busy,” he said.

The stretch was built in the mid-1970s, curving around swaths of farmland between Gonzales Road and the Santa Clara River bridge. County officials say this was done to accommodate a farmer who didn’t want his land sliced up and to detour around a former convent.

Britt said he would look into concrete medians, but he can’t commit to recommending them. The county already added tall yellow and black reflective warning signs to the curves five years ago, he said.

“I’ve got 550 miles of roadway to consider, and this one is actually in good shape,” he said.

Residents of the Santa Rosa Valley had long complained about safety on busy Santa Rosa Road, a two-lane thoroughfare that bisects their community.

But their concerns received new attention in December 2001 following the death of a 14-year-old girl struck by a vehicle as she jogged along the road. Within a year, supervisors had approved a number of safety improvements, including installation of a traffic signal.

Cagnacci, who served on the 1993-94 Ventura County Grand Jury, said he knows his way around bureaucracies and won’t give up until concrete barriers are in place.

“I’m going to hold their feet to the fire,” he said of the supervisors. “I pick my battles very carefully. But when I do, I follow through.”