Some Legal--and Creative--Ways to Curb Speed Demons

Sweet reason infects you, dear readers, when discussing a cure for dangerous speeders.

You picture stoplights, traffic signs and passing lanes--all proper and rational methods for corralling and managing the world’s chronic lane-swapping hurriers. Nice. Sensible. Legal.

Street Smart, on the other hand, imagines an enormous rocket-powered pile-driver.

All smoke, flames and greasy iron rivets, it prowls 30 feet above the freeways like a fugitive prop from a bloated ‘70s arena-rock concert, pounding errant zoomhounds into the pavement. Simple. Elegant. To the point.

What’s that, you say? What about the swift accumulation of wrecked cars, hospital bills and lawsuits? Details, details. At least it might make those laser-guided geniuses slow down somewhere under Mach 5.

Two such losers in the last week alone sailed up behind Street Smart at 85 as he moved down the fast lane at 68 to pass a line of cars doing 64. They acted as if none of the other cars existed and Street Smart was personally blocking them from their destiny.

They took the battle posture of the aggressive male zoomhound--swerving back and forth 5 feet from Street Smart’s rear end, flipping their high beams and flapping their mandibles. And as Street Smart finally cleared the slower cars and got out of their way, they gestured wildly with their oversized middle fingers--doubtless the genetic byproduct of horrific inbreeding or gasoline vapor-induced mutation--and resumed lane-drifting and menacing the motoring public at 85.

Just think: hissssssss-*ker-BLANG!* And nothing left but the peaceful serenity of an empty rearview mirror.

Oh, all right. Perhaps your ideas are better.

Dear Street Smart:

Have you received many complaints about the intersection of Upland and Woodcreek roads in the Mission Oaks area of Camarillo?

Upland Road has become a speedway! The traffic in the morning hours backs up to a 15-car wait as we try to turn left off Woodcreek onto Upland.

I have been hoping for a stop sign for the last 12 years that we have lived there. Is there a stop sign in sight for this terrible intersection?

Sheila Peo

Camarillo

Dear Reader:

We can confidently say we are shocked, shocked that we have heard no complaints about Upland and Woodcreek.

But take heart. As you read this, Camarillo city contractors are planning this week to erect light poles, connect them to wiring and traffic sensors already buried underground, and hook up a traffic signal for that intersection.

“The city’s proceeding with a signal because Upland is an arterial street carrying higher-speed and higher-volume traffic,” said Tom Fox, Camarillo traffic engineer. “If you were to install a stop sign, there’s a very strong possibility that there would be more rear-end collisions . . . and accidents with a stop sign than without.”

The lights will be triggered by traffic sensors under the roadway, and push-buttons set up for walkers and cyclists alike, he said, so your morning commute should go much more smoothly very soon.

Dear Street Smart:

I drive Santa Rosa Road between Leisure Village and the bottom of the Norwegian Grade several times a week.

There is no passing lane, and most of the other drivers go faster than I do, and many faster than the 55 mph now allowed on most of Santa Rosa. I am constantly trying to find a safe shoulder so that I can pull over and let them pass--big trucks, vans, pickup trucks, anything painted red--and it’s not easy.

It appears to me that there is room to construct passing lanes like those on Pacific Coast Highway that alternate direction. That way, no one would be impatient and frustrated for more than a short time before they are able to pass.

Joan Ellis

Camarillo

Dear Reader:

Street Smart is intimately familiar (and quite fond of) the reasonable passing-lane design on PCH. Every mile or so, there is a chance to breeze past dawdling tourists or duck fire-breathing turbo-freaks without eating shoulder.

Unfortunately, it cannot work on Santa Rosa, even though the two-way left-turn lane or suicide lane could theoretically be turned into passing lanes, says Butch Britt, deputy Ventura County public works director.

The county revamped the road two years ago by widening it and smoothing out some curves, and it considered installing passing lanes, he says.

But engineers settled on the two-way left-turn lane instead because drivers using the driveways along Santa Rosa need a safety island out of the traffic flow where they can wait to turn, Britt says.

“Trying to solve one problem could cause another one,” he added.

Confidential to the Santa Rosa speed freaks: In case you haven’t already learned the hard way, John Law focuses extra hard on controlling speeding there. Street Smart and his checkbook were made painfully aware of this last winter.

Dear Street Smart:

The school zone speed limit signs on Gonzales Road at Oxnard High School do not make sense.

They just say “25 MILES PER HOUR--WHEN CHILDREN ARE PRESENT.”

What does that mean? During school hours? Before and after class hours and during the noon lunch hour? When kids are visible on the sidewalk?

Since the signs don’t make sense, motorists ignore them and go through the school zone at 50 mph at all hours.

In Ohio, school zones with speed limits have flashing yellow lights and a sign saying, “IN EFFECT WHEN LIGHTS ARE FLASHING.” That doesn’t seem too hard to do and makes a lot more sense than the current signs.

R. B. Scott

Oxnard

Dear Reader:

Now Street Smart had a lesson on this several months ago, but we do not assume that you were not paying attention.

You may have been excused from class because you were stuck in traffic all morning (behind a quadruple rear-ender involving people who were simultaneously tailgating, sipping coffee and fixing their mascara) and had no time to read the paper.

Or you might not have enrolled yet in Street Smart Traffic School (No charts! No quizzes! No textbooks! Twice the bad jokes in half the time!), which meets every Monday morning come rain, shine or gas station price-fixing blitz.

But here it is: Motor Vehicle Code Section 22352(b)(2) says you must obey the posted school zone speed limit at all times during school hours unless there is a fence surrounding the entire school, California Highway Patrol Officer Dave Cockrill says.

If the school is fenced, you must hew to the school zone limit only when kids are leaving or arriving at school or migrating down the sidewalk to local eateries during lunch hour to escape the mystery meat, pea pellets and carbo-mash in the school cafeteria.

When kids are nowhere to be found at the school, you can drive whatever speed you please, Cockrill says--unless you want to be ticketed for busting the prevailing speed limit in the neighborhood.

NEXT: We know loyal Street Smart readers cannot survive on a diet of legal queries, lousy intersections and miserable driving complaints alone. We are always looking for new topics, new ways of expanding your road savvy. What’s on your mind? Please write.

Peeved? Baffled? Miffed? Or merely perplexed? Street Smart answers your most probing questions about the joys and horrors of driving around Ventura County. Write to: Street Smart, c/o Mack Reed, Los Angeles Times, 93 South Chestnut St., Ventura, 93001. Include a simple sketch if needed to help explain. E-mail us at Mack.Reed@latimes.com or call our Sound Off line, 653-7546. In any case, include your full name, address, and day and evening phone numbers. Street Smart cannot answer anonymous queries, and might edit your letter.