Piece of Mind: Truck wrecks, traffic and tunnels
Like Pavlov’s dogs, La Cañadans are being trained to equate the sound of hovering media helicopters with the likelihood that there’s been another big-rig wreck in the middle of town.
Of course, the beating noise of the rotor blades overhead arrived too late to warn you off if you already were on-course. I thought of you drivers who were stuck in the morning rush hours Tuesday and Wednesday, when our community took another one-two punch of traffic-snarling accidents. I hope you were excused for your tardiness.
While we are grateful no one was killed this week, two such crashes in two consecutive days naturally alarm us. And they bring up painful memories of the April 2009 runaway big-rig crash — the horrific one that took the lives of two — and the runaway onion truck that crashed here seven months prior to that.
It seems that both of this week’s accidents were the result of sleepy drivers. On Tuesday, it was the driver of a car who nodded off and collided with a big rig. The result was an overturned truck and two people injured, although, according to reports, not badly.
On Wednesday, the driver told our reporter he found himself closing his eyes just before his rig overturned on the eastbound 210 where it passes immediately north of our McDonald’s.
Stay alert, friends. You just don’t know who of those drivers around you might be headed for dreamland, even though they started the day with other destinations in mind.
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As long as there are cars, trucks, RVs and buses sharing the roads, there will be accidents; there’s no getting around that. This all brings me to my next thought: If we think the traffic is heavy and sometimes dangerous now, we’ll learn how bad things can really get if the proposed 710 tunnel should ever be completed and truck traffic out of the harbor funneled through here. I enlisted our representative in the state Assembly to write a column on the subject this week. So, in our forum pages you’ll find Anthony Portantino’s take on the tunnel proposal and the efforts of local leaders to stop it.
While I’m in agreement with all the opponents to the 710 tunnel, there are, no doubt, many living here who have their own sound reasons for wanting to see the project completed. We welcome all points of view, so I hope you’ll take the time to write us.
When you do, please give us your real name, phone number and address. We will only make public your name and city of residence, but we do need to have the other information for purposes of verification. Why? Because we will not print your letter over a fictitious name. Stand up proudly and own your words. You might learn that more people agree with you than not, and they’ll appreciate you for saying publicly what they felt too timid to express.
CAROL CORMACI is managing editor of the Valley Sun. She can be reached at ccormaci@valleysun.net.
