20 September 2013

Carbon Canyon Road Fatal Accident Roadside Memorial

A few days after a young man died in a car crash on Carbon Canyon Road in front of the old La Vida Mineral Springs property in Brea, a roadside memorial has been created.


The accident led to the death of Abel Preciado, a resident of Chino who was a few weeks shy of his 21st birthday and whose family and friends left farewell comments on a poster board taped to a power pole a short distance east of the accident site and who also spelled out his name on rocks on the ground nearby.

There have been several such memorials along the state highway in recent years, including one for a young man on the eastern end of the roadway, another for a motorcyclist killed in a crash at Old Carbon Canyon Road, and a third for the bicyclist who was hit on Carbon Canyon Road just east of Fairway Drive.


Each time one of these is placed it serves as a reminder that, regardless of the circumstances of the passing, there are those friends and family members who are left to grieve an untimely end of someone they cared about.

Usually, these memorials stay in place for several weeks or months and are tended to, but inevitably this changes and they either are removed or left to gradually waste away. 


Anyone who takes the time to stop and look at these heartfelt remembrances can easily understand the loss felt by those who put them up.

Unfortunately, almost all of these tragedies were preventable.  Split second bad decisions generally account for them.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

All I gotta say is people need to slow down. Every one seems to "charge up the hill" at 70 mph to beat the two traffic lights at Olinda village, making a right turn from Olinda village, going uphill to the city is always a little annoying buy knucklehead right on your rear.

prs said...

Agreed that there is way too much speeding on Carbon Canyon Road--it can be heard every night of the week. While the circumstances of this crash were not revealed, speed certainly seems the likeliest factor, but at 3 a.m. on a Saturday anything there could be others. Still, it's unfortunate that this young man died--a post on a new memorial goes up tomorrow.