Bouquet Canyon Road still a safety concern

Vehicle crashes down embankment, no injuries were reported, according to emergency crews

It’s a new year, but the same old problem plagues motorists on Bouquet Canyon Road, as rescue workers discovered Tuesday, when they labored to remove a car from Bouquet Creek following the latest car crash.

Emergency response crews were dispatched to a stretch of Bouquet Canyon Road, near mile marker 14 and the Sierra Pelona Truck Trail, shortly after 8:50 a.m. Tuesday.

They found a car overturned at the bottom of Bouquet Creek, about 100 feet down an embankment off Bouquet Canyon Road.

“There were no victims, no one transported to the hospital,” Fire Specialist Randall Wright of the Los Angeles County Fire Department said Tuesday.

Firefighters advised that about 100 feet of cable was needed to pull the car out of the creek.

The single-vehicle crash is the latest in a series of continual and regular collisions that occur on Bouquet.

Tuesday’s crash comes two days before the two-year anniversary of the crash that claimed the life of 19-yearold Elena Kramer, of Leona Valley, on Jan. 4, 2016.

Officials with the Los Angeles County Department of Public Works -- partly in response to a community meeting held following the Kramer fatal crash -- were ordered to come up with ways to improve the road’s safety.

Public Works officials who were asked about safety improvements in November — after three unrelated solo-vehicle crashes happened on Bouquet in just over three hours — said using gates to shut the road down completely in rainy weather was their primary safety measure.

Public Works crews also put up “changeable message boards to inform the public of road conditions,” Public Works spokesman Kerjon Lee said last year.

But, while aspects of the rural road continue to captivate the attention of Public Works officials, motorists driving too fast along the road are also to blame.

In May, County officials announced the new traffic safety measures at a Leona Valley Town Council meeting in response to public calls for safety improvements.

They began their safety improvements by lowering the speed limit on Bouquet Canyon.

“There is a reduction in the posted speed limit to 45 miles per hour between mile marker 8.00 and mile marker 15.74,” Lee told The Signal after the May meeting.