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In the 2023 documentary “21 Miles in Malibu,” local legend Jefferson “Zuma Jay” Wagner leans against the doorway of his iconic surf shop on the north side of Pacific Coast Highway across from the Malibu Pier.
“I have seen nine fatal collisions or deaths from this exact spot where I’m standing,” Wagner says, before he ticks them off: a good friend who was speeding and flipped his Jeep several times, a helmetless motorcyclist hit by a car, a woman who died by suicide by stepping off the curb into high-speed traffic, a pedestrian who crossed the street at an angle in front of fast-moving cars, and so on.
Wagner spent eight years on the Malibu City Council, and in that time, he says, “there was no serious awareness campaign about the tragedies and mishaps that happen on this highway daily.”
The stretch of Pacific Coast Highway that spans the length of Malibu is one of the most storied roads in the world and also, tragically, one of the bloodiest. As someone who frequently drives PCH between Santa Monica and Trancas, I often hold my breath for fear that some spacey tourist or distracted teenager will wander off the beach and into my path. Or that a car will back out of a driveway right into me. Or that a driver ahead of me will spot an open space on the shoulder and slam on the brakes to back into the spot. I am in awe of the brave cyclists willing to risk their lives for the sake of a beautiful ride.
Since April 2010, when 13-year-old Emily Shane was killed by a reckless, suicidal motorist as she walked to meet her father after a sleepover, 63 people have died in crashes along PCH. That is a shockingly high number of traffic deaths in a city of fewer than 10,000 people.
“It’s a hybrid road — a country road, a highway, a city road. People run across it all the time, and something has to be done,” said Emily’s father, Michael Shane, who has dedicated the years since his youngest child died to making PCH safer.
Three years ago, Shane, a film producer best known for “Catch Me if You Can” and “I, Robot” made “21 Miles” to shine a light on the extraordinary dangers of having a five-lane state highway running through what is essentially a residential neighborhood. The hour-long documentary, which won several film festival awards, aired Thursday on PBS SoCal and will be available on the PBS app and website.
“Being on this roadway,” says Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Det. David Huelsen in the film, “is probably the single most dangerous thing you’re gonna do on your vacation.”
Shortly after “21 Miles” was finished, in October 2023, four young women who were seniors at Pepperdine University were killed by a 22-year-old Malibu man who lost control of his BMW while speeding at an estimated 104 mph.
The four women had just parked and gotten out of their car on a portion of PCH that locals call “Dead Man’s Curve,” when Fraser Bohm slammed into three parked cars, which hit the students. (Bohm has been charged with four counts of murder and four counts of vehicular manslaughter.)
While Emily’s death got the conversation started, the deaths of sorority sisters Niamh Rolston, Peyton Stewart, Asha Weir and Deslyn Williams catalyzed real change on PCH.
“You get one or two people dying and it’s a tragedy,” Shane told me. “When four people standing at the side of the road are wiped out, that got attention. Things started to happen.”
About seven months after the crash, state and local officials launched a safety campaign urging drivers to “slow the fast down.”
In February, Malibu announced with great fanfare that CalTrans had launched a program to synchronize 12 signals on an eight-mile segment between Topanga Canyon Boulevard and John Tyler Drive on the west side of Pepperdine. Monitored in real time, drivers going the speed limit will experience continuous green lights, while drivers going too fast will more frequently hit red lights.
Later this summer, two temporary roundabouts are to be installed on PCH at Matador Beach and Encinal Canyon, two high-risk beach access points, which will slow traffic down in the similar style seen along any number of European roadways.
“There was a big, big controversy about that,” Shane told me. They are taking a four-lane highway down to a two-lane highway and people got very upset because they thought it would bottleneck. But you can drive over them if there’s a disaster and they can be removed in an hour.”
In September, 10 speed cameras, authorized by the state Legislature, are to be installed along a stretch of highway where more than 80% of the city’s crashes occur. Drivers exceeding the speed limit by more than 10 mph will be fined, between $50 and $500. (The $500 fine is for exceeding 100 mph. According to a Michelin mobility study based on anonymized data collected from phone apps, 24% of drivers on PCH who exceed 100 mph do so between the hours of 10 a.m. and 3 p.m., which is insane.)
Shane thinks the fines are ludicrously low, and I agree.
“If you got a $1,500 ticket instead of a $200 ticket, you might think twice about going fast, because it’s going to cost you,” he said.
In January 2025, the wind-driven fire that ravaged Pacific Palisades demolished hundreds of homes and businesses in Malibu, as well, and PCH has been heavily impacted. Drivers have been forced to slow down in construction zones, and the number of accidents has dropped precipitously.
On weekends, however, no one respects the posted 25 mph limit along those stretches. As I discovered last Sunday, it’s almost dangerous to observe it, as cars tailgated me, or swerved around me into the faster lane. Sadly, there was nary a police car in sight.
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Ideas expressed in the piece
The article argues that Pacific Coast Highway through Malibu is an inherently dangerous “hybrid road” that functions simultaneously as a high-speed thoroughfare and a residential main street, creating constant conflict between fast-moving cars and pedestrians, cyclists and beachgoers.
The column contends that for many years there was little sustained public awareness about the corridor’s lethality, and presents the documentary “21 Miles in Malibu,” memorials such as the Ghost Tire installation, and the stories of victims’ families as overdue efforts to force the region to confront the human cost of crashes.
The piece suggests that recent state and local initiatives, including the “Go Safely PCH” education campaign and stepped-up traffic enforcement, represent a long-awaited acknowledgment from officials that speeding and reckless driving on this iconic stretch have become a public-safety crisis rather than an acceptable risk[1][9].
The article argues that engineering changes such as synchronizing traffic signals, installing temporary roundabouts at dangerous beach access points, adding lane separators, and improving striping and signage are essential tools to slow drivers and protect vulnerable road users, not mere inconveniences for motorists[1][4][9].
The piece suggests that automated speed cameras authorized under SB 1297, to be placed at high-risk locations along Malibu’s 21 miles of PCH, are a crucial step toward changing driver behavior, given evidence from other jurisdictions that cameras reduce speeding, collisions and fatalities[4][8].
The column contends that the planned fines for speed-camera violations are far too low for a roadway where drivers sometimes exceed 100 mph, arguing that substantially higher penalties are needed to deter extreme speeding and reflect the seriousness of the risk[4][8].
The article underscores that families of victims, Pepperdine community members and local advocates view these safety measures as both practical and moral obligations, pressing governments to move faster and more aggressively so that recent tragedies at “Dead Man’s Curve” and elsewhere are not repeated[2][6][7][10].
The piece suggests that early enforcement and education efforts have begun to show results, pointing to recent data indicating crashes have declined on the corridor after intensified ticketing and safety upgrades, and uses that improvement to argue for expanding and making permanent these interventions[1][9].
The column highlights that even temporary construction-related slowdowns after recent fires revealed how lower speeds sharply reduce collisions, reinforcing the view that strict, consistently enforced speed limits and traffic-calming devices should define PCH in Malibu rather than sporadic, lightly policed slow zones.
Different views on the topic
The article notes that some residents and drivers have strongly criticized the planned temporary roundabouts and lane reductions, fearing that narrowing a four-lane highway to two lanes will create severe bottlenecks and congestion, and questioning whether such measures will meaningfully improve safety or simply frustrate everyday travel.
The piece describes how some motorists treat the temporary 25 mph construction zones as unrealistic, tailgating or swerving around drivers who obey the limit, reflecting a viewpoint that strict adherence to reduced speeds on PCH can feel impractical or even hazardous in real-world conditions.
Malibu City Council’s decision to delay approval of the multimillion-dollar speed-camera contract, citing legal compliance and racial equity concerns, signals opposition from local officials and community members who worry that automated enforcement could disproportionately impact certain groups and raise due-process questions[3].
Critics of the speed-camera program have pointed to projections of hundreds of thousands of citations and millions of dollars in annual revenue, arguing that the system risks becoming a regressive “cash machine” for government rather than a narrowly targeted safety tool, and urging greater scrutiny of how tickets and funds will be handled[3].
Some transportation officials have stated that PCH does not meet the technical criteria required under California law to lower speed limits, leading to frustration among residents who advocate for slower speeds and view these legal constraints as an obstacle to what they consider common-sense safety reforms[6].
Families of the Pepperdine students killed in 2023 and their attorneys have filed lawsuits accusing state and local agencies of maintaining a dangerously designed roadway and failing to implement life-saving measures despite long-standing knowledge of the hazards, suggesting that incremental campaigns and modest engineering tweaks still fall short of the sweeping redesign they believe is necessary[10][2][5].
The Pepperdine Graphic and other local coverage have highlighted voices calling for more physical traffic-calming infrastructure—such as raised medians, narrowed lanes and barriers—rather than relying primarily on signage, education and enforcement, reflecting skepticism that driver behavior alone will change without dramatic changes to the road environment[6].
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