Garage mishap opens the door to change
Neighborhood speeding causes motorist to crash into a home
By Sophia Fischer sfischer@theacorn.com

DAMAGES—Pieces of a garage door remain inside the home of Carrie Jones on Sunnycrest Drive in Oak Park. A passing motorist was said to have lost control and slammed into the door. The house sits on dangerous blind curve, according to the family.

A stretch of Sunnycrest Drive in Oak Park has long been a source of concern for residents who live on the road's connecting culdesacs. After a speeding motorist crashed his car through the garage door of one of the homes, the residents decided they needed to make their streets safer.

The Jones family returned to their home on Summit Knoll Court on Aug. 20 to find a Toyota Camry smashed through their garage door. At the scene were police and the car's 18-year-old driver.

Carrie Jones was worried because she said her children, Dylan, 5, and Grant, 2, often play with their friends in the front yard or on the driveway.

Summit Knoll is located at the end of a blind curve for vehicles traveling southbound on the oneand-a-half-mile stretch of Sunnycrest between Deerhill and Kanan roads.

"Sometimes we have the garage door down and my boys are playing in the garage. I work out in the garage. We wouldn't have known the car was coming. We wouldn't have seen it," Jones said.

No one was home when the crash occurred, and the family's cars were not in the garage. But Jones' elliptical machine and mailbox were destroyed. The damages were$11,000, she said.

"The driver was speeding down Sunnycrest and lost control," Jones said. "He said his first instinct was to avoid a truck parked in front of our house. It happened so fast you don't really know what you're thinking. There was no alcohol, no drugs, just simple speeding. Now when I hear a car coming down the hill I jump."

Sara Piesco, who lives across the street from Jones, attended an Oak Park Municipal Advisory Council meeting last week to seek ways that would slow the traffic on the blind downhill curve. On that part of Sunnycrest, the suggested speed limit is 25 mph.

"I wish we could post a CHP (California Highway Patrol) officer there every day for a while. You could ticket people every day for violating the speed limit," Piesco said.

Piesco recalled two incidents in particular that took place in the past four years. One involved a young woman driving on Sunnycrest at night who lost control of her vehicle and crashed into the brick wall of house on Summit Knoll across the street from the Jones home. Another incident involved a southbound motorist who lost control of her car, spun out of control in the middle of Sunnycrest and ended up northbound.

This is not the first time the issue has come to the MAC's attention, said Councilmember Todd Haines.

"We asked for a stop sign to be put there but were told no by the county," Haines said.

"We need the county to look at all mitigating steps we can take."

Council members discussed several remedies, including speed humps, a stop sign andthe closing of Sunnycrest at the blind curve. Traffic codes require residences to be on the street where speed humps are installed, but there are no homes directly on Sunnycrest. A stop sign may not be viable because it would not be visible to motorists due to the blind curve.

Closing Sunnycrest would mean that residents could only exit north to Deerhill Road or south to Kanan Road, depending on which side of the dead end their home is on.

"I would like to see what the neighbors would recommend because they will be the most impacted," MAC Vice Chair Mike Paule said.

Piesco said she will put together a petition for residents to indicate what kind of mitigation they would prefer. The county will probably conduct a traffic study, Paule said. Community support, through letters and a petition, is needed to convince the county to override stop sign or speed hump codes.

"My preference would be a stop sign," Piesco said. "I don't really relish the idea of speed humps, and I really wouldn't want them to close the street because we do drive to the right sometimes; but whatever it takes to make it safer for everyone."