Accidents in Angeles Forest

This article represents opinions of people who are not fully aware of the public’s total disregard for their own safety.

All the signs in the world will not deter the fringe element from attempting to do just what signs indicate should not be done. In fact, the presence of a sign warning of a certain danger is all that is needed for the foolhardy type to disprove the message. My experience as a 30-year veteran of the U.S. Forest Service, four years of which was spent in the Angeles in the mid- to late-1940s, proved to me that there is no way to keep the small number of daredevils from harming themselves. The only sure system would be to close national forests to all potential users.

If Judge A. Wallace Tashima would spend a day in the forest observing the behavior of the daredevil types, he would soon come to the conclusion that there is simply no way to deter these people from placing themselves in harm’s way, even when they are sober. This tendency is compounded ten times over when alcohol is involved, boosting the participants’ feeling of invincibility to all danger. And of course, once an individual is injured or killed by any such foolhardy activity, the deep pockets syndrome comes into play.

JAMES R. PRATLEY, San Diego