Road rage closes California road

Road rage can be more than just cursing and yelling at other travelers. A case in Wrightwood, California, takes road rage to a whole new level.

A shop owner at left worries about her business being affected by closing of Highway 138 in Wrightwood, California. (AP photo).

This amazing story tells about drivers shooting at workers, throwing food at them, driving into them - all in retaliation for the state limiting access to a busy road that needed major repairs...

New York Times
July 21, 3007
Associated Press article
Road closed after drivers behave badly

WRIGHTWOOD, Calif., July 21 (AP) — California highways have been shut down by wildfires, mudslides, earthquakes and police chases. And now road rage.

Drivers inconvenienced by a road-widening project subjected construction workers to so much abuse — death threats, BB gun shootings, a flying burrito — that the state shut down California Highway 138 altogether.

Now drivers must take a detour that costs them at least a half-hour, and businesses along the road are suffering.

“A few inconsiderate people have ruined it for the rest of us,” complained Julie Dutra, who owns a scrapbook and stationery store in this town in the Angeles National Forest about 50 miles northeast of Los Angeles.

Highway 138 connects two areas that have swollen with urban refugees in the past decade. Without it, roughly 20,000 drivers a day have to take a winding, two-lane road or other indirect routes that predate the population boom.

In the five years before construction started last summer, there were nearly 3,000 traffic accidents and 68 deaths, according to the California Highway Patrol. The highway had become so dangerous it was known as Blood Alley. The $44 million widening project was intended to alleviate the danger.

The first sign that things were going to turn ugly was after the California Department of Transportation allowed drivers to use the highway only during rush hour last summer, with traffic flowing in one direction at a time and creeping along behind escort vehicles. Read more...