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What some see as a pretty standard road, others may see as a raceway.
Sepulveda Boulevard – with its multiple lanes and ruler-straight miles – has been the scene of some frightening wrecks recently in Mission Hills.
A crash last year was caught on a dash cam. The driver of a white car involved in the crash suffered severe injuries. LAPD said speed was a factor. Last month, a 71-year-old man was struck and killed while trying to cross the street.
On Sunday, a speeding pickup slammed into a fire hydrant at Sepulveda Boulevard and Nordoff Street. The water from the hydrant landed on the roof of a T-Mobile store, eventually causing the roof to collapse. The store was red-tagged, along the other businesses in the building.
Mission Hills resident Jeremy Cervantes said the problem with the crashes is people “not paying attention.”
Hamid Nomar works security at the now indefinitely closed strip mall. He said he constantly sees people driving recklessly on this stretch of Sepulveda Boulevard.
“People don’t know how to drive in this area, specifically this area,” he said. “They don’t follow rules. They’re running red lights, especially after about 10 p.m. They’re just driving too fast.”
Eyewitness News did some digging and found some data that folks around the area might find surprising: The number of collisions in this area is actually going down.
The Eyewitness News Data Journalism Team pulled up records over the past 10 years for traffic collisions on and around Sepulveda in Mission Hills. Crashes actually peaked in 2016 with 344 wrecks. Since COVID, the numbers have dropped significantly, with this year on par to have one of the lowest numbers of crashes.
“Traffic enforcement comes down to education, engineering and enforcement,” LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell said. “It’s a three-pronged approach. So, we look at what are the factors of causation and then how do we best address that.”
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