Dangerous Left Turns Into Left Turn Lanes on Carbon Canyon Road

Last Wednesday, the Chino Hills Planning Commission meeting featured a presentation of the first phase of a Carbon Canyon Road traffic study.

More on that in a coming post, but there was a statement made by the traffic engineer for the consultant, KOA Corporation, that there are too many cars on the state highway for the type of road that it is.

When it came time for ten canyon residents to express their concerns during public comment, several of them stated that turning left onto Carbon Canyon Road can be a stressful and frustrating experience, which is true.  The road mentioned most often was Canon Lane and concerns about accidents stated.

However, just forty-five minutes ago, while I was heading east on the highway, a late-model BMW 5-series sedan turned left from Canon and, because the road was not clear for that turn, the driver used the left turn lane on westbound Carbon Canyon to southbound Canon Lane as a collector lane.

Sure enough, a black sedan entered that left-turn lane to go south onto Canon just as the BMW was starting to exit it and cut in front of the driver ahead of me to get onto the eastbound lane of Carbon Canyon.

This is the second time in the last several days that I've seen/experienced this.

Last week, I was heading the same direction and a new-looking Mercedes SUV made the same maneuver and was looking to enter the roadway from the westbound left-turn lane, but I happened to be there, so the driver stopped and had to wait in that lane before heading on to Carbon Canyon Road.  In this case, there was no one turning left, but what if there had been?

Residents of the canyon know all too well the frustration of waiting long periods to try and turn left (or right to a lesser extent) onto Carbon Canyon Road during busy times.

Risking injury or death by making dangerous turns onto the roadway using a left-turn lane others might use, however, is lunacy.

In both these cases, these weren't young, inexperienced drivers, they were mature adults in their 40s to 60s.  They really should know better.

Among the comments at last week's meeting was that traffic signals at intersections like Canon Lane and Carbon Canyon Road would make turning left onto the state highway a great deal safer.  It's hard to argue with that, though there are many other factors about such issues traffic flow and delays to bear when considering these changes.

For now, though, people have to be more patient.  In both cases, when I looked into my rear view mirror after those maneuvers, there was room for those vehicles to turn left behind me within seconds.

Is it really worth it to try and shave off a few seconds of time to make a dangerous and illegal left turn?