As the October anniversary approaches of the deaths of four Pepperdine students killed last year by a driver on Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu, lawmakers in Sacramento on Friday took a major step toward making the 21-mile stretch of the highway safe.
Senate Bill 1297, passed with bipartisan support and now awaiting Gov. Gavin Newsom’s signature, will allow the city of Malibu to install five camera systems to monitor the speed of drivers passing through the popular oceanfront community.
“A lot of people, including myself, have been trying for years to make the road safer,” said Michel Shane, whose 13-year-old daughter, Emily, was struck and killed by a driver on the road in 2010. “For the first time since I’ve been angry at them, the county and the state have done something. They’re finally taking this seriously.”
Between 2011 and 2023, there were 170 deaths or serious injuries to drivers, passengers, cyclists and pedestrians on the Malibu road, according to a Times analysis.
But the tragedy, which occurred shortly before 9 p.m. on Oct. 17, 2023, galvanized both the community and lawmakers. The Alpha Phi sorority sisters — Niamh Rolston, Peyton Stewart, Asha Weir and Deslyn Williams — were killed while walking on a sidewalk along PCH when a car traveling more than 100 mph crashed into the parked cars and women.
On Wednesday, a Van Nuys Superior Court judge granted a continuance on a preliminary hearing for Fraser Michael Bohn, 22, who is charged with four counts of murder and four counts of felony vehicular manslaughter. Bohn has been released on $4 million bail.
In July, the highway claimed another life in a head-on collision.
“Unfortunately, it took the deaths of these four young women to set this process in motion,” said state Sen. Ben Allen (D-Santa Monica), author of the bill, which was passed as a five-year pilot program to collect data that could help overcome objections that speed cameras violate privacy and lead to increased government surveillance.
The bill, Allen said, was designed to get drivers to slow down and treat the highway more like a boulevard. “If we can get people to take their foot off the gas, then that’s a win.”
Last October, Newsom signed a similar speed camera pilot program (AB 645) for Los Angeles, San Jose, Oakland, Glendale, Long Beach and San Francisco. Local officials and state representatives had sought to include Malibu on that list but were met with objections because the bill excluded state highways like PCH, which are under Caltrans jurisdiction.
“We were pessimistic about this new bill passing when we first started working on it,” said Malibu Mayor Doug Stewart, who described the frustration of being shut out of the first pilot program. “But we knew we had to try. This had to pass.”
“We had been told SB 1297 was a long shot, so we are very excited that it passed,” said Assemblywoman Jacqui Irwin (D-Thousand Oaks), co-author of the bill. “We hope the governor realizes how important this is to the residents of Malibu.”
Steve Uhring, a former Malibu mayor and now a council member, said the city has already begun identifying vendors and locations for the cameras, but he acknowledges that making PCH a safer place will require more than cameras.
“This is another tool in our toolbox,” Uhring said. “We will be meeting with Caltrans to identify other changes on PCH to calm traffic. We need to get the message out, but we know it won’t be an easy task.”
Last December, California Transportation Secretary Toks Omishakin announced that Caltrans had been awarded a $4.2 million contract to develop a list of 30 improvements for PCH from Santa Monica to Ventura County, including improved curve striping, speed feedback signs, and replacement of safety corridor signs.
The improvements were long overdue, said Damian Kevitt, CEO and founder of Streets Are For Everyone.
“The PCH, as it stands today, was designed in the 1960s,” Kevitt said, “long before we had the housing density we have today or the millions of people who flock to Malibu during the summer months. The speed limit is dangerously high on some stretches of the freeway.”
According to the City of Malibu, 40,000 people pass through the city each day and 15 million visitors make the community a summer destination. Since 2013, the city has recorded more than 4,000 traffic collisions, resulting in 1,600 injuries. More than 100,000 traffic tickets have been issued.
While officials are quick to say SB 1297 is about saving lives and not raising revenue, Shane sees a benefit in issuing citations.
“With the figures we are looking at, I think we will raise close to a million dollars a week,” he said. “That can be used to repair the PCH and for education, to explain to children between 10 and 13 years of age the dangers they face when they get behind the wheel.”
Shane, a film producer, recently completed a documentary about PCH titled “21 Miles in Malibu” and hopes to release it soon.
“The thing is, you know there’s going to be another death,” he said. “That’s a given on PCH if you just look at the statistics. But with the amount of initiatives that are being done, I’d like to think that Malibu could become a model city for other cities and not a place of destruction.”
