Cliff chaotic with backups, wrecks
Four students involved in accidents this semester, crashes result in more traffic
Gabriel Cabello
Issue date: 11/4/09 Section: News
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Surrounding roads and entrances to City College are of major traffic concern-four car accidents involving students have happened in this semester alone.
"I think the problem is that drivers aren't necessarily speeding, but are going at a high rate of speed because Cliff Drive is considered a highway," said Director of Security Erik Fricke.
Lieutenant Paul McCaffrey of the Santa Barbara Police Department shares this perspective.
He said that anytime people are driving at high speeds, accidents are inevitable.
Although the police department occasionally holds checkpoints to enforce traffic laws on Cliff, McCaffrey said they don't do anything in particular on Cliff Drive that they wouldn't do anywhere else around town.
As long as drivers aren't exceeding 40 mph, they aren't speeding on Cliff Drive. They are, however, making it difficult for students to turn left when exiting and entering East and West Campus.
Furthermore, any changes in the near future would be hard to initiate because Caltrans manages the road, and the city does not.
"They stated that the number of incidents that occurred outside of campus did not exceed the ratio they have to determine unsafe roads," Fricke said.
Essentially, Caltrans expressed that Cliff Drive was too safe to make any changes on.
The college's hopes to ease traffic problems would likely only occur in a scenario where Caltrans handed over control of Cliff Drive to the city.
And most traffic problems are created by students making rash decisions in attempt to avoid the traffic in the first place.
"I just make an illegal U-turn two streets down," sophomore Shane Franklin-Rogers said.
However, he might not be breaking the law after all since U-turns are legal at most Cliff Drive intersections, according to Lieutenant McCaffrey.
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