Malibu Surfside News
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• The Publisher’s Notebook
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Pacific Coast Highway is Malibu’s
lifeline, the pathway that connects all of our homes to the
community and to places of work and play. Those of us who not
only live here, but also have businesses and work here, find
ourselves on the roadway upwards of a half dozen times a day,
even when we are conserving energy as the cost of gasoline
spirals ever higher. But five-dollars-or-more-a-gallon gasoline
isn’t going to change the nature of the coast route,
either for those who live and work here, the beachgoers who
come to bask in the rarified Malibu sunshine, the commuters
from the San Fernando Valley who work on the Westside, or
the travelers through Malibu going home to the exploding
communities in Ventura County. We can’t seem to alter
being driven by a manic sense of saving time that triggers
speeding, changing lanes unsafely, and taking the wheel when
we’re tired or ill. We rush to beat traffic signals, even
though the cars we’ve passed will catch up several lights
later. Some drivers refuse to signal lane changes, perhaps they
think it improves their mileage. As for drivers on cell phones,
even ones that are “hands free,” most are too
distracted to know what’s going on around them. Then
there are the DUIs. As long as alcohol is an acceptable teen
initiation into adulthood and a response to many of adult
life’s social, psychological and sexual woes, drunk
driving will claim lives.
This dreary litany is an acknowledgment of
the holiday weekend ahead. Even if the weather is May Gray,
thousands will pour into the area in search of sun, fun and the
Malibu mystique, which has as many definitions as there are
definers. Memorial Day is the unofficial kick-off of
summer at the shore, despite what all the calendars say. As the
public flocks to local beaches, even more cars will join the
lines of vehicles snaking along the PCH. Although traffic jams
may actually mean fewer high-speed traffic fatalities, traffic
writeups will accumulate. In the 1980s, the Malibu Surfside
News undertook a community project with the help of the then
General Telephone Company and held a contest for the best
eco-friendly (and completely removable) bumper sticker urging
safe driving on Pacific Coast Highway. This is what the winner
looked like. It graced cars all over Malibu. The recent run of
accidents indicates it may be time to think about another
bumper sticker to be given free to all locals and as many
visitors as possible. Does anyone care? Any ideas out there?
Can anything be said in a half dozen words or less that might
help to cut the roadway carnage? Perhaps we could go for a week
without having to report a serious crash on PCH, then a month,
then a year. It’s possible.
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