New stoplight might backfire

The questionable Calabasas City Council decision to proceed with the installation of a traffic signal at the junction of Mulholland Highway and Old Topanga Road seems to be based on incomplete analysis and dangerous assumptions regarding traffic safety in that particular location.

The existing stop signs call for vehicles to slow to a stop before proceeding through the intersection. The overall effect of the stop signs is that all traffic is obliged to reduce speed, halt and recognize priority with other vehicles before proceeding.

Replacing the stop signs with a traffic signal may serve to speed the flow of traffic, and that encouragement to speed is a problem. We have seen an increase in the general tendency to ignore the yellow warning when a traffic signal is changing and recklessly accelerate through an intersection, hoping that others will not get in the way or perhaps, unfortunately, not even caring.

Since there would be highspeed traffic approaching the intersection from both the east and west and since there would be correspondingly less reaction time, having to glance to the right and left, to compensate for quickly changing situations and the often unpredictable actions of other drivers, it seems almost an invitation to disaster to imagine, with a traffic signal in such a hidden and curve-ridden stretch, that the signal itself would successfully regulate and ensure the safety of patient and impatient drivers.

Safety is too important to risk on a change of traffic control mechanisms without much more investigation and analysis of the circumstances and factors present in the intersection and in the complexion of drivers and consideration of alternatives which do not increase the danger to traffic passing through.

It would really be tragic if with a traffic signal we are soon faced with traffic victims as a result of our lack of understanding and shortsighted and destructive vision.

The California Environmental Quality Act review protections would serve the city well. Leon Koziewicz Calabasas