Gratuitous Gore on Highway 154

I think it's a brilliant perspective. I will time my drive and see how close it is to your theory.

I encourage my cycling friends to NOT ride the 154. While they are fully legal to ride on this road, it's a catastrophe waiting to happen. Have you been behind a large truck, and watch it drift from side to side, and then over the double yellow lines? Every day I see this.

The real problem is the GPS Map system. Since GPS has become common, every large truck, double traile, oil tanker, takes the pass to save a few minutes. My theory is that the GPS tells them. They can't really turn around once they get on the 154. This is a disaster in the making. The trucks drift across the double yellow constantly. They barely fit on the road. They can't maintain speed on the hills, and can't pull over for the 20-30 cars driving 20 mph under the speed limit behind them. I see some of the same drivers every day, hammer down, until they meet the climb.... This is my perspective, and I encourage the CHP to take a serious look at this safety issue... Someone should take a video camera, and have someone drive them over the pass and tape it...

And the cars straggling home from the Casino? Yeah, don't get me started on that one.... Sobriety Checkpoint would be a good start....

Everyone who drives 154 should read this. I avoid 154 like the plague because of what you have described.

Gratuitous gore indeed! Chuck doesn't touch on the number of people each year who perish as a result of taking a dive off the Cold Spring Bridge.

Good article. Instead of spending $3.5 million trying to save people that are deliberately trying to kill themselves, spend it on better passing lanes, wider shoulders, and other things that might protect innocent people that don't want to die on this highway.

We live in a dumbed down culture and these people don't care about education, civic awareness or whatever: they've been conditioned to think the rules of civilized society doesn't apply to them. I'm not talking about someone who absent-mindedly goes a few miles per hour over the limit but rather the people who zoom past those of us going 55 as though we're sitting still and who sit right on the bumper of anyone who dares to observe the posted speed limit.

The one big thing that will slow people down is getting their attention by handing out tickets. These people know perfectly well what the speed limit is but they are so self-absorbed they simply don't care that they are breaking the law, being rude, and endangering lives. These people behave like spoiled little kids and they need to be made accountable.

I commute from Solvang and if I'm in the single lane keeping it at the maximum speed allowed (lest I be accused of holding up traffic) the vehicles will often bunch up behind me and when it splits into two lanes they go around me and in some cases scramble around each other like I'm parked.
By handing them a nice speeding ticket and when the topic at local workplaces is about who the latest person is that got ticketed hopefully the collective driving I.Q. might rise to room temperature.

The only other suggestion I'd make is that the car companies can the aggressive car commercials with loud frantic music in the background showing cars whipping around blind curves as though it's a race course.

totally agree with bill

"these people don't care about education, civic awareness or whatever: they've been conditioned to think the rules of civilized society doesn't apply to them."

The only solution - and only thing they may possibly react to is to punish them - BEFORE they cause more accidents.

Please leave the Cold Springs Bridge, or Panacea Bridge, as it is called locally, out of this discussion.

It is a great comfort to know that it is there, should the need arise!

Everytime I drive down 154 there is a huge line of cars behind me....and I drive the speed limit.

Amen. Driving the 154 is a death wish. When anxious people pile up behind me I slow down figuring that if they are going to hit me, the slower the better. I also make it a habit to pull over and let the compulsives drive on to wrought their fate on somebody else.

Maybe some Burma Shave type signs would help:

Pushy drivers push up daisies.

Interval!

If you can read my license plate
You will have a date
With the judge
Who has a grudge.

Doing sixty
Can be tricky.
The dirt will be sticky
When you are buried with your dickie.

154 is a death wish??? Anyways. I've been driving that road since i was 16 yrs. old. So about 15 yrs now. Whats bad is all the campers going to the lake. Make them go around on the 101! Also, if you ride a motorcycle avg. commute is under 25min. I'm sure you've seen a red flash fly by at over 100.

Quite recently, I was driving North on 154 doing about the speed limit when I noticed a large pickup truck tailgating me with no more than 3 feet (!) separating our two vehicles. Before reaching the Painted Cave Road intersection, the driver behind me started blasting his horn and flashing his headlamps, then overtook me on a semi-blind left hander, crossing over the double yellow lines into the oncoming lanes, looked over at me yelling something (which I couldn't hear), flipped me the finger, and then roared off ahead, left arm loosely hanging out the driver's side window. Very luckily, in those few seconds, there was nobody coming the other way.

A few minutes later, I caught up with the same driver, now tailgating a a slower truck towing a large trailer, flashing his headlamps and occasionally pulling into the center of the road to try and overtake, which he eventually did, just before reaching the summit.... I then saw him do a swerving right hander onto East Camino Cielo....

I try to avoid 154 because of imbeciles like this. Alcohol, testosterone, inexperienced "boy racers" with more 'attitude' than driving ability, lack of awareness, and a hazardous mountain road all make for accidents. There are also equally idiotic drivers on Old San Marcos Road, probably the same crew who perform the 154 stunts. It remains a mystery why Highway 154 attracts more morons per mile than any other road I know, anywhere in the world, and that includes some notorious places in Europe (!!!!). No countries mentioned ;).