• The Publisher’s Notebook •

Sticky Solutions

BY ANNE SOBLE

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.