Many years ago, we had a tragic accident at the corner of McBean Parkway and Arroyo Park Drive. An SUV with a child in the back seat was hit by an oncoming car making a left turn. The SUV spun into a giant light pole. The child was killed by the impact.

There was a root cause — and one that, left unfixed, would lead to more accidents. The left-turn lanes at that intersection were misaligned. In some situations, cars going north couldn’t see cars turning left — and the left turners couldn’t always see oncoming traffic.

The danger was built into the median’s design.

Back then, I asked Andrew Yi, our public traffic engineer, to come out and take a look. We drove the road together. Andrew saw the problem right away.

No question — more accidents would follow unless we did something.

After some pressure, the city fixed it. They realigned three medians along McBean, from south Valencia through Granary Square. To my knowledge, no major accidents have happened there since.

But there’s still a deadly problem nearby.

McBean was originally built as........

© Santa Clarita Valley Signal