JULIAN, Calif. — Speeding cars and blind curves are making people, who live on Harrison Park Road in Julian, feel unsafe when coming in and out of their neighborhood.
“You can see here how if somebody comes through here too fast, if they’re too close to the middle of the road, they’re going to hit you,” said resident, Wayne Daniel, while taking CBS 8 on a driving tour of the windy, two-lane road.
“So you see this blind curve right here that we’re coming up to, this is where that head-on happened back in October,” said Daniel. “See here’s another bad spot right here, you can’t see coming around the corner.”
Daniel had a close call while driving last week.
“That big septic pumper truck was like in the middle of the road on that curve and I stopped and the guy kind of just swerved at the last minute,” said Daniel. “It scared the bejeebers out of me, you know.”
Harrison Park Road breaks off from State Route 79, and for a ¾ mile stretch going westward, the road is the County of San Diego’s responsibility to maintain. One 25 miles per hour sign sits at the end of this stretch beyond the boundary of the county’s portion of the road.
Beyond that point, it becomes a private road. The county does not have any speed limit signs in place on their portion of the road. In fact, more than a year ago, residents put up their own sign, but the county took it down.
“I can’t understand it. To me, this is a public safety issue,” said Daniel. “This is their maintained road, if they’re maintaining this road, they need to maintain it and keep it safe.”
Daniel would also like to see a yellow center line painted in the road to keep cars in their lanes.
“To me, if there’s a center stripe here and you’re trying to stay on the right side of the road, it’s going to make you slow down,” said Daniel. “I hope the county will take this serious safety issue seriously and put in some speed limit signs, so that we quit having these head-on collisions here.”
CBS 8 contacted the County of San Diego, and Donna Durckel, Communications Officer with the County’s Land Use & Environment Group, responded with the following information:
“For the approximate ¾ mile section that we are responsible for, we are currently assessing the placement of a speed limit sign per the California Vehicle Code requirements. This was based on an April 2023 request from the community. We looked at this section in Fall of 2022 based on a similar request but found the volume of traffic did not warrant installation at that time.
The California Vehicle Code has minimum guidelines to set a speed limit. Our review will comprise of current vehicle speeds, a 24-hour volume, and a vehicle radar study and should be complete in mid-June. If data supports the posting of a legal speed limit, the Traffic Advisory Committee and Board of Supervisors will have to approve the request to post speed limit signs. We also have a curve warning sign posted near the beginning of the curve section to alert road users.
Roads that do not have a posted speed limit can be enforced by the CHP using the ‘Basic Speed Law’, which means that the Officer makes a judgement on safe speed based on roadway conditions and what is reasonable and safe. We will be alerting CHP of the concerns raised to us, and we will request they consider visiting this road for enforcement.”
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WATCH RELATED: Speeding drivers making Garnet Avenue dangerous, neighbors worried (April 2023).