State Highway Claims Its 9th Victim in 4 Weeks

An 81-year-old Pasadena man was killed Monday morning on California 126 after his vehicle drifted off the road and smashed into a parked Caltrans steamroller.

The man, whose identity was not released pending notification of his relatives, is the ninth person to die on the state highway in the past four weeks, officials said.

California Highway Patrol officers said the man may have veered off the road east of Piru because he had a stroke or because he was blinded by the morning sun, but local officials--who have long complained about safety on this roadway--sometimes referring to it as “Blood Alley”--are saying the accident was just another example of the highway’s danger.

The man, who was driving a 1980 Buick sedan, went off the highway about 7:45 a.m. where it curved to the left. He apparently was following the old direction of the road and went through a wooden guardrail, traveled about 100 yards and slammed into the steamroller, said CHP Officer Dave Cockrill.

The accident comes just days before the Ventura County Transportation Commission is scheduled to meet and--at the behest of Fillmore Mayor Roger Campbell--discuss the recent rash of fatal accidents on California 126.

“I think we need to be looking at an accelerated schedule to complete this highway,” Campbell said. “These things can be done quickly. . . . I mean how many lives does it take?”

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The state Department of Transportation has widened much of the 40-mile highway from Ventura to the Golden State Freeway, completing the stretch between Santa Paula and Fillmore almost 10 years ago.

Caltrans is spending about $7 million to finish widening the last 4.7-mile stretch of the roadway in the Fillmore and Piru area. Engineers expect the work to be completed by December 1998.

About three years ago, after an earlier rash of fatal accidents, Campbell tried to push for a concrete center divider along this two-lane portion of California 126, but Caltrans and the CHP rejected the idea, saying it probably would not improve safety.

But Campbell said the latest number of accidents should force those agencies to again look at how they can improve safety. Since the first week of December, nine people were killed in four accidents along the stretch from Santa Paula to the Golden State Freeway.

The most recent incident occurred between Fillmore and Santa Paula on Dec. 27 when a head-on collision claimed the lives of two young girls--8- and 11-year-old sisters from Ventura--a week after a Dec. 20 head-on collision near Piru that killed two men. Other fatalities included a Dec. 18 accident in which a Fillmore pedestrian was run over by a tractor-trailer truck and another head-on collision near Chiquita Canyon on Dec. 9 that claimed the lives of three Fillmore men.

Although Campbell still favors a center divider all along the roadway, he said Monday that better traffic enforcement and speeding up the widening project would go a long way toward improving safety.

Campbell and Supervisor Kathy Long are scheduled to meet Wednesday with officials from the Ventura County Transportation Commission, Caltrans and the CHP to discuss options to improve safety on the highway.

A formal meeting of the transportation commission is scheduled for Friday morning, during which commission members will review statistics on the number of accidents on California 126 during the last decade.

“I agree with Mr. Campbell that they could probably accelerate the construction,” Long said. “I called the meeting Wednesday, because I felt a need to get the attention of Caltrans, the Highway Patrol and the public that something should be done.”

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To get the improvements completed faster, state officials have to be made aware of the dangers along the highway, Long said.

State Sen. Jack O’Connell (D-San Luis Obispo), in Sacramento on Monday for the first day of the legislative session, said that he planned to push the state transportation commission to spend whatever it takes to complete the road improvements sooner.

“There are a lot of things that can be done,” O’Connell said. “The CHP now has access to a helicopter and airplane for beefed-up enforcement, and I believe there are some other road improvements that could easily be completed.”

Among the improvements suggested by O’Connell, Campbell and Long are cutting fine grooves into the center and sides of the roadway, which create a loud noise that resonates inside a car as it drifts across them. The grooves, along with Bott’s dots--the white, reflective lane dividers on highways--are meant to create a “sound barrier” to alert drivers when they drift off the road or across lanes and into oncoming traffic.

Campbell and Long also want to erect a sign near the highway’s entrance alerting drivers to the danger of speeding.

“I’d like to see a sign that says something like: ‘It will take you 21 minutes to get to the [Interstate] 5 if you travel 55 mph and 17 minutes if you go 70. Is a life worth the four minutes you’re going to save by speeding?’ ” Campbell said.

Times staff writer Mack Reed contributed to this story.