Safe, not sorry

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I was recently asked by a mental health care professional specializing in treatment for trauma why I did not communicate the need for center dividers along Pacific Coast Highway to my friends in Malibu. She asked me to consider starting the movement to make PCH safer. She quipped, “If the Getty Center gets dividers, why can’t we?”

How many lives could we save, how many accidents could we prevent, if we could reduce the number of illegal U-turns from McClure Tunnel to Trancas Canyon? What finally motivated me to write was it was 4 p.m. and I was driving home from the office. Suddenly, the traffic stopped. Fire trucks, rescue vehicles, sheriffs’ cars, lifeguard cars and ambulances went rushing by. I held my breath as my car crawled forward. Would it be a familiar car, a loved one, a friend? Would I be faced with the reality of my fearful thoughts each time I hear a siren? I breathed a sigh of relief. It was no one I knew. It saddened me to think that I was grateful this time, but someone else would receive a call today about his or her loved one being hurt or killed.

We live on a freeway, Pacific Coast Highway. Let’s do everything we can to make our highway safe for our children and other people’s children with dividers. Let’s do it for the boys, Keith and Tyler, along the stretch of the highway where they were senselessly killed in Pacific Palisades.

I would love to hear your thoughts and suggestions. Will you help? Let’s do it for the boys and girls on PCH!”

Lynn Saunders Guilbert