City Council unanimously approved an ordinance at its Monday, March 28, meeting that creates standards to make Malibu’s parking lots safer and prevent storefront crashes.
Over 500 people are killed and as many as 3,600 are injured each year from storefront crashes nationwide, with California holding the second-highest rate of such crashes in the U.S. Mayor Pro Tem Lou La Monte introduced a parking lot safety standards ordinance in Malibu after a storefront crash killed the 73-year old mother-in-law of Artesia Councilmember Victor Manalo, as well as three other people.
“People are killed and injured every year in parking lot storefront crashes, and with these common sense safety measures, we can prevent such tragedies from occurring in Malibu,” La Monte said in a release by the City of Malibu.
Provisions of the new ordinance include requiring two Vehicle Impact Protection Devices (VIPDs) for each head-in parking space adjacent to outdoor seating areas, requiring that signs adjacent to any parking stall be properly secured and mounted on VIPDs, permitting VIPDs to be comprised of bollards or barriers or combinations of both, imposing color and height restrictions to assure conformity with Malibu’s General Plan goal of preserving the rural community character, and imposing the ASTM F3016 Crash Impact Performance Standard to assure sufficient impact protection.
A 24-month amortization period has been prescribed to give property owners time to either come into compliance with the ordinance or remove outdoor seating areas.