The lights are out at Adam Lane’s Bay Area home when the call comes about 11 p.m. from a fellow California Highway Patrol officer on Highway 4. This time of night, Lane says, these calls are rarely good. Two people are dead in a vehicle crash, the ninth and 10th people to die in 2023 on Contra Costa County’s most notorious highway. The total since Jan. 1, 2021, sits at 44 dead in 39 fatal crashes, an average of about one death every six weeks for 2½ years. The details in the late-June crash are, sadly, familiar to Lane: At least one car appears to have been speeding. Both of the victims were ejected. “People speed, and people don’t wear seat belts,” said Lane, a public information officer for the agency. “When we get out to a scene, and you see them ejected, and the seat belt dangling … I can’t tell you how frustrating that is.”
California High Patrol officer Adam Lane logs into the computer system while parked at the California Highway Patrol office in Martinez, Calif., on Thursday, July 6, 2023. (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group) Contra Costa County’s longest highway runs 37 miles in both directions from Interstate 80 near Hercules in the west part of the county to the border of San Joaquin County just outside of Discovery Bay on the east. It features dangerous turns, steep bumps, tight lanes and, critically, many drivers who rarely see a speed limit they aren’t willing to break. “The fatalities are very unfortunate,” said Tim Haile, the executive director of the Contra Costa Transportation Authority. He added that the county has spent about $1.1 billion in highway safety projects over the past decade to a highway that was “at one time one of the most congested and dangerous (highways) in the country.” In recent years, the danger has increased with overall use, he said: Persistent population growth in the eastern part of the county, combined with low use of public transportation, was made even more visible on the highway as the COVID pandemic waned. What used to be reliable commute-time heavy traffic made way for large numbers of cars throughout the day and evening, he said. “People are out there all day long,” Haile added. “And people are driving faster.” California High Patrol officer Adam Lane speeds up to catch a vehicle speeding on Highway 4 in Pittsburg, Calif., on Thursday, July 6, 2023. (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group) Speeders and seat belt violators are never off CHP officers’ radar. They are also searching for those who may be driving under the influence or glancing at their phones, two other factors that have contributed to the mayhem on the highway. It is a primary reason why on a recent July night, Lane, a 35-year-father of one , pulls his patrol car to a stop underneath an overpass in Pittsburg about 9:30 p.m. In less than a minute, a blue Chevrolet roars by in the left lane, weaving from one side of the lane to the other. Lane flips on his red strobe light, hits the gas and executes a series of fast driving maneuvers — moving around other vehicles, speeding up and braking quickly as he lines up behind the Chevy and uses his public speaker to instruct the driver to pull over. Not every driver who appears reckless is just joyriding. In this case, the driver is trying to pilot the vehicle while also assisting with a baby’s dirty diaper in the back seat of the car. The maneuver is ill-advised, but the driver shows no signs of impairment. Lanes lets him off with a warning. “All in a routine night,” Lane says. Cars travel on Highway 4 near the Railroad Avenue exit in Pittsburg, Calif., on Thursday, July 13, 2023. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group) The highway itself offers intimidating terrain. Hilly, tight right-and-left turns greet drivers near Bay Point and Hercules, with short, sharp sloping grades near the latter. Long stretches between the curvy portions might allow drivers to let their guard down as their speeds creep up. Near Highway 4’s junction with Interstate 680 on the Pleasant Hill-Martinez border, there are a frenzy of exits and merge ramps. Traffic on transition ramps to and from I-680 often can spill out onto Highway 4, leading to sudden stops in the traffic flow. “For us,” Lane says, “it’s the highest-complaint area.” In some areas, the highway’s shoulders run up against cement walls; drivers coming up onramps have only a short length of road to merge into a maze of cars that could be moving at full speed. In far eastern Contra Costa County, the highway narrows to one lane in each direction. Lane says the CHP does what it can to monitor the highway. During a four-day enforcement period from 6 p.m. on June 30 until midnight on July 5, the CHP used five patrol cars to monitor Highway 4. Normally, they use three. Even when speed may not be a factor, there can be gruesome outcomes to incidents on the highway. Three children under 10 years old were among five people killed one morning last November when a woman drove the wrong way and slammed her car head-on into another one. Less than four weeks later, a wrong-way, head-on crash happened again — and another person died. Both were DUI wrecks, according to the CHP; such incidents remain a problem not only on that highway, but throughout the state, if the Fourth of July weekend was any indication. The agency said it arrested an average of one person statewide every five minutes on suspicion of DUI during the June 30-July 4 enforcement period. But if certain times of the week and year lead to more DUI incidents, speeding and the lack of seatbelts remain a constant issue on Highway 4, according to Lane. On a recent early evening, a silver Lexus GS300 flies by the patrol car, going west at 85 mph. Traffic is heavy, with many people motoring out of the region for a long weekend. Lane quickly spots the speeding vehicle and initiates a stop. “Two kids in the back seat, one of them not strapped into the car seat, the other not seat-belted at all,” Lane says with considerable disgust as he returns to his patrol car after issuing a ticket. He says the person behind the wheel offered a baffling excuse for the dangerous safety lapses: “I’m a good driver.” California High Patrol officer Adam Lane pulls over a driver for driving while using a cell phone on eastbound Highway 4 in Antioch, Calif., on Friday, June 30, 2023. (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group)