By now you’ve heard the story about the red Ferrari Enzo (one of only 400 ever made) demolished on Pacific Coast Highway after crashing into a telephone pole at an estimated 120+ miles per hour. The driver of the car, Stefan Eriksson, subsequently ran into the local hills and was only found a few hours later with a blood alcohol level of .09.

The Los Angeles Times decided to treat it lightly on their front page and filled the coverage with quips and reverence for the car. The Times called the crash a “Sig Alert made for Malibu” under the headline “So Speedy, So Exclusive, So Expensive, So Totaled.” Ha, ha, ha.

From the Times perspective the only thing not funny about a car traveling 120 mph on Pacific Coast Highway and disintegrating into a telephone pole was that it was an Enzo beloved by so many exotic car devotees.

It might have been nice if the Times had noted that people are regularly killed on this very stretch of highway by drivers too stupid (as in this case), distracted or drunk (also this case) to avoid killing innocent people.

It would have been nice if the Times noted that just a few miles away two cyclists, Stanislav Ionov and Scott Bleifer, were killed by a distracted driver. When I was young people used to laugh about drunk drivers until MADD came along and reminded us that it really wasn’t that humorous. As a regular driver and cyclist on PCH, I simply don’t think it’s funny that some clown thought it okay to drive 120 mph on an urban street, notwithstanding the guffaws from the Times about the knee-slapping crash and madcap antics of the driver afterward.

Perhaps the Times should read Malibu: Sunshine, movie stars, and senseless deaths on PCH before breaking out the jokes the next time some a-hole decides to see how fast their million dollar car can go on a local roadway. The crime wasn’t that he crashed or that he crashed a rare automobile, the crime was ignoring the safety of everyone else out on the highway. Maybe the next time the Times covers a story like this they can mention these little things. I’m sure they can do it in a way that hilarity will still ensue.

Update: Spong reports that investigators are saying the car may have been traveling at 162 mph and that Eriksson is likely to get away with a slap on the wrist (a couple thousand dollars). More hilarity.

Update 2: Another Ferrari crash … but in Redondo Beach? What’s going on here?

Here is a link to the CBS video story.

technorati: Ferrari P.C.H. malibu

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 23rd, 2006 at 11:52 pm by Insider and is filed under Los Angeles Times. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.