Pacific Coast Highway Could Get Speed Cameras Following Deaths Of 4 Pepperdine Students

Barry Stewart’s daughter and her three friends from Pepperdine University died when a young man allegedly driving 104 mph down Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu crashed into them in his mother’s BMW.

Six months later, Stewart sat last week beside Malibu’s state senator, Ben Allen, and urged lawmakers to approve a bill that would add Malibu to a short list of California cities testing out automated cameras to ticket speeders.

Malibu, Allen said, is one of the nation’s deadliest cities for car crashes for one reason. “A primary factor in every one of these incidents was high-vehicle speed,” he told the Senate Transportation Committee last week.

At least 60 people have been killed on the picturesque Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu since 2010, most of them on a roughly two-mile residential stretch known as Dead Man’s Curve, where Stewart’s daughter, Peyton, died along with sorority sisters, Niamh Rolston, Asha Weir and Deslyn Williams.

“This bill is California legislators’ opportunity to save lives without harming anyone and without curbing the freedom of any, any law-abiding Californians,” Stewart said.

The committee’s members voted 14-1 to advance Senate Bill 1297. Last year, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill, AB 645, that allowed Los Angeles, San Jose, Oakland, Glendale, Long Beach and San Francisco to start similar five-year speed-camera pilot programs.

A man walks by bouquets of flowers on the Pacific Coast Highway today in Malibu where four Pepperdine students were killed when they were struck by a car Tuesday evening.

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Ryan Sun

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None of the cities have started fining drivers, since the legislation passed last fall requires the municipalities to first create local policies, hold hearings and then have public information campaigns before speeders get automated tickets.

Cities across the state already deploy automated red-light cameras, which snap photos of the face of a driver and their vehicle. Tickets are typically handled by the traffic department located in the criminal division of the local courthouse.

Under the six cities’ pilot programs and the one proposed for Malibu, the cameras will snap pictures of a vehicle’s license plate instead of a driver’s face. The speeding tickets a municipality would issue wouldn’t count toward a driver’s traffic record and appeals would be handled in civil court.

Fines start at $50 for drivers who go at least 11 mph over the speed limit and rise to $500 for those speeding more than 100 mph — though amounts can be reduced depending on the motorist’s income.

Civil liberty groups, such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, oppose the speed camera programs, citing privacy and government surveillance concerns. California’s police officers’ union also opposes the programs.

“Law enforcement officers often use discretion and provide drivers an opportunity to mitigate the violation,” Brian Marvel, Peace Officers Research Association of California president, wrote in a letter opposing the bill. “Verbal and written warnings are often given in place of a ticket. They assess the situation, and after a conversation with the driver, they decide if a verbal or written warning is a better course of action. This discretion saves many low-income individuals and senior citizens their hard-earned dollars. Law enforcement exercises discretion; cameras do not.”

Assemblywoman Laura Friedman, a Democrat from Burbank who authored last year’s speed-camera bill, told the Los Angeles Daily News last year that the union has concerns the cameras will eventually replace officers’ jobs.

Sen. Roger Niello, a Republican representing the Roseville area, cast the lone “no” vote last week, saying the bill didn’t go far enough.

“I’m just very doubtful that that’s going to be effective,” Niello said. “In areas like that, we need overwhelming enforcement on the road. … They speed, they get a picture sent to them and they get a ticket and no points (on their driving record). And I don’t think that’s enough of a consequence.”

But Stewart told the committee that cameras would give understaffed local law enforcement more flexibility, and reduce the number of deadly collisions like the one that killed his daughter and her friends.

“Electronic enforcement would free scarce personnel to handle other offenses, the ones that require actual live deputies,” he testified.

Debris is seen along the Pacific Coast Highway near where a crash killed four Pepperdine seniors.

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Ryan Sun

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Allen, the bill’s author, told the committee that data from the Federal Highway Administration shows that speed cameras reduce crashes on urban streets by 54%. The hope, he said, is the cameras would keep Malibu from another tragedy like the one “where these four wonderful, young women were mowed down.”

Sheriff’s investigators said Fraser Michael Bohm was traveling at 104 mph when he veered into three parked cars that collided with the four women who were standing near the parked vehicles.

Bohm, 22, was released from jail after posting $4 million bond. He has pleaded not guilty to four counts of gross vehicular manslaughter and four counts of murder. His attorney told reporters that Bohm wasn’t going as fast as law enforcement officials allege and another car was involved in a possible road rage scenario. According to the Los Angeles Times, a local sheriff’s official told reporters there was “no evidence” that the crash stemmed from an alleged road rage incident.