On the Skids in Carbon Canyon: Flattening on the Curve

A rare post last week which discussed the introduction of new speed limits on the Orange County portion of Carbon Canyon Road (State Route 142), generated a comment left on the Chronicle Facebook page: "Signs signs everywhere the signs . Signs don’t work . People do 70 passing me westbound by the park every morning . I drive it at 5:45 am every morning. Thanks for trying I guess!"

While the "On the Skids in Carbon Canyon" series tried over about a decade or so to bring some form of attention to the regular occurrences of dangerous driving on the state highway, especially on weekend evenings, those have largely gone by the wayside as fundamentally nothing has changed and there are other priorities that have emerged, which is why posts here have been few in general recently.

It should be noted, though, that CalTrans can only improve state highways through such means as signage, striping, barriers, and others.  Patrolling is for other agencies to enact.  As dangerous driving continues, virtually daily (well, nightly, mostly), the only real and effective mitigation would be more of a physical presence.  Barring that, these accidents will continue to happen and it appears that calculating acceptable risk, along with weighing how to allocate existing funding and other factors, is what drives policy.

With this in mind, this post includes several photos taken on the Chino Hills side of the canyon from Old Carbon Canyon Road to the summit where accidents have occurred in recent weeks. The recent improvements done by CalTrans' district 8 with resurfacing, but also adding many safety elements like more and better secured guardrails, many more reflectors, new signs, improved striping and more, do not stop errant drivers from eviscerating reflectors, mowing down signs, flattening utility boxes, crushing guardrails and plowing into privately owned power poles, fences and walls, with these latter obviously having financial impacts on property owners who have no control over what happens when reckless drivers, knowing they have free reign, race through the canyon. 

So, there are plenty of people out there like the Facebook commenter who experience first-hand just how much dangerous driving there is on Carbon Canyon Road and the photos here show what at least some of the consequences are, though the risk of getting hit by reckless driver is one those of us who use the highway regularly face and deal with.