The city recorded 53 fatal traffic collisions, the most in more than 10 years.
Long Beach firefighters respond to a rollover crash on 10th Street and Elm Avenue where the driver knocked over a tree and busted through a metal fence.Along busy streets in Long Beach ’s Washington neighborhood, longtime resident Jesus Esparza says locals will consider just about anything to keep themselves safe from speeding drivers.
The latest idea: leaving reflective vests on the worst street corners so pedestrians can don them while crossing and leave them for the next passerby. It’s a grassroots tactic that illustrates their frustration with Long Beach’s increasingly deadly streets. In 2025, the city recorded 53 fatal traffic collisions, a sharp increase from 2024 and the most in more than 10 years. Long Beach has been striving for years to make its roads safer. In 2016, the City Council said it hoped to eliminate traffic deaths and serious injuries by 2026. It was their version of a Vision Zero plan that many municipalities have adopted.If you're enjoying this article, you'll love our daily newsletter, The LA Report. Each weekday, catch up on the 5 most pressing stories to start your morning in 3 minutes or less.But in the ensuing decade, Esparza, who leads the local neighborhood association, says he’s seen little progress. He’s regularly passed along residents’ requests for traffic-calming measures — things like adding more lighting or delaying green lights so pedestrians get a head start in a crosswalk. But, he said, he’s yet to see any effective measures installed. “We would always ask for speed bumps or speed tables,” Esparza said in Spanish, “but they don’t put them ” Despite a rise in deadly crashes, a spokesperson for Long Beach’s Public Works Department, which manages streets, said the city is still confident in its strategy.Jackie and Shadow: Hope remains for new life in Big Bear’s famous bald eagle nest Bald eagles can lay a replacement clutch if the eggs are lost early in the incubation process, as seen in the nest several seasons ago.Its “core principles” include protecting pedestrians, bicyclists and motorcyclists by slowing down drivers, Public Works spokesperson Jocelin Padilla wrote in an email. Those plans “remain unchanged.” She said speeding is a primary factor in the city’s most serious crashes. Bad driver behavior, such as impairment and distraction, is also to blame. Their greatest toll has been on people outside of cars. Last year, 32 people were killed while walking, biking or riding an e-scooter. That eclipses the number of people murdered here last year: 29.On another dangerous section of roadway along Orange Avenue, resident Kelsey Wise said she’s seen countless near misses. In response, she spent hours putting together a PowerPoint presentation to convince the city to install speed humps on Orange Avenue between Seventh Street and Hellman Avenue.Wise estimated that roughly half of the drivers on her street travel above the posted 25 mph speed limit — a habit she finds increasingly troubling when teenagers from the nearby school zip through her neighborhood on electric scooters and e-bikes. Last month, Wise presented the information to Councilmember Mary Zendejas’ office, who told her they would refer the presentation to Public Works. She’s yet to hear anything back. “I think the system right now is designed to respond once something catastrophic happens, not when residents are signaling that something catastrophic is likely to happen,” Wise said. Public Works told the Long Beach Post that seemingly simple fixes like the speed bumps Esparza and Wise asked for aren’t feasible. Its engineers prefer other “traffic calming treatments.” Speed humps slow down emergency response vehicles and the department has received “objections to noise” caused by drivers hitting them, Padilla wrote in an email.Over the past few years, the city has “made meaningful investments” to redesign major corridors with those principles in mind, Padilla wrote. Last May, Long BeachKurt Canfield, an organizer with local street safety group Car-Lite LB, said he was skeptical that speed limit reductions would slow down drivers unless it ramps up enforcement. Cops have been writing fewer speeding tickets since the pandemic.. Officials plan to install speed cameras at 18 locations throughout the city, but they’re not scheduled to be installed until the summer. They’ll then start issuing warnings to drivers until fines begin in the fall.“I think people are wanting to get back out and bike and walk, but as more people start doing that, now we have what essentially amounts to more targets to be victimized,” Canfield said.“It just means that we need to try more, we need to continue building safer streets and changing behaviors because it does work,” he said. You come to LAist because you want independent reporting and trustworthy local information. Our newsroom doesn’t answer to shareholders looking to turn a profit. Instead, we answer to you and our connected community. We are free to tell the full truth, to hold power to account without fear or favor, and to follow facts wherever they lead . Our only loyalty is to our audiences and our mission: to inform, engage, and strengthen our community. Right now, LAist has lost $1.7M in annual funding due to Congress clawing back money already approved. The support we receive from readers like you will determine how fully our newsroom can continue informing, serving, and strengthening Southern California.
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