Accident

Adams Avenue – another Accident waiting to happen

A couple of hundred yards from our house is Adams Avenue. From Mesa Verde Drive East to Beach Boulevard it is six lanes wide, three lanes in each direction with a wide median (concrete with bushes and trees in our neighborhood). The “official posted speed limit” is 45 miles per hour. Costa Mesa and Huntington Beach seem satisfied with actual speeds as I have seen police with radar guns only twice on this road in the twenty plus years my wife and I have lived here.

It seems to me, however, that the actual speeds are too fast. Is 55 too fast in a 45 zone? or is it just about right? or, for some (many? most?) is it too slow? Well, whatever.

Sometime around 6.30 this morning as I was having coffee and reading the paper and my wife was outside reading and having a cigarette there was a loud bang and crunch. She rushed in to tell me about it but I had heard the noise myself. I figured it was yet another accident at the Adams intersection a furlong down the street from our house and didn’t want to add my presence to the looky-loos on the scene. A minute or two later I heard the siren from fire rescue – the nearest fire station is just another furlong up the street (about a quarter-mile from the accident prone intersection).

Adams Freeway Accident 5.19.2014
Adams Freeway Accident 5.19.2014

Last week there was an accident just a half mile west of this intersection that took out a gas pump at one of the four gas stations at that intersection.

Several years ago there was an accident at our intersection in the evening that had a medivac helicopter land in the street in front of our house. Medivac helicopter? we’re just two miles from a major hospital and ten to fifteen minutes from Hoag Hospital if you obey the speed limit and stop at red lights.

Slow down, be careful. If you are going straight watch for those turning left in front of you. If you are turning left, ten to thirty seconds waiting for oncoming traffic to pass won’t kill you – turning in front of and trying to beat that speeding oncoming traffic could kill you.

Drive Safe – Arrive Alive