Finding the Right Lawyer for a Car Accident in Garden Grove
Have you been injured in a car accident in Garden Grove, or another area nearby in Orange County? Hiring an experienced personal injury attorney who is familiar with the area’s local ordinance is the best way to maximize the results of your settlement.
Located roughly 30 miles southeast of the city of Los Angeles in northern Orange County, Garden Grove is home to approximately 171,644 residents. With a mean travel time to work of 28.9 minutes for local workers, Garden Grove traffic is most concentrated along California State Route 22 (also known as SR-22, or the Garden Grove Freeway).
Alarming Driving Statistics Along the 22 Garden Grove Freeway
With access first opened to drivers in 1967, the Garden Grove Freeway was left largely unaltered for decades after its construction. As the population of the city and its neighbors grew, SR-22 became notorious for traffic congestion and accidents, culminating in an annual Garden Grove car accident death count that spiked as high as 24 in 1980.
Though much of the Garden Grove Freeway runs through the city itself, it also leads into the Orange Crush interchange, a dangerous and heavily crowded roadway convergence between Orange, Santa Ana, Anaheim, and Garden Grove. Famed as an epicenter of congestion and Orange County traffic accidents, the Orange Crush interchange was inducted into the 1998 edition of the Guinness Book of World Records as “the most complex highway interchange in the world.”
In an effort to address the surging Garden Grove accident rate and traffic congestion, the Orange County Transportation Authority (OCTA) began a series of infrastructure improvement projects in the early 2000s, with SR-22 access improvements completed in 2008, and the West County Connectors project completed in partnership with the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) in 2015.
The Lingering Risks of a Garden Grove Freeway Accident
Despite these improvements, safety concerns remain for the Garden Grove Freeway. Citing the heightened risk of a car accident in Garden Grove along SR-22 (as compared to other stretches of highway in California), Caltrans began work on the SR-22 Safety Improvement Project, a $20 million endeavor to further reduce Garden Grove traffic congestion and accidents.
Key points of the project include widening the inside of the horseshoe connector between I-5 and SR-57 to three lanes, and making safety adjustments to the existing concrete barriers. Construction began in 2019, and has a slated completion date of the summer of 2021 (with road work primarily being done at night in order to reduce the effects of any necessary Garden Grove Freeway closure).
Recent efforts to improve roadway safety throughout other parts of the city include the establishment of the Garden Grove Police Department Accident Reduction Team (ART). Funded by a 2021 grant of $278,500 from the California Office of Traffic Safety (OTS), ART aims to provide enhanced road enforcement, and spread public awareness about local traffic safety.
Finding the Best Orange County Car Accident Attorney After a Traffic Collision in Garden Grove
Unfortunately, even with a continued focus on local road safety by city and state officials, the Garden Grove accident death rate remains tragically elevated, with eight traffic-related fatalities in 2019 alone – four of which occurred on the 22 Garden Grove Freeway.
If you’ve been injured in a car accident in Garden Grove, it’s important to find the right law firm to take your case. With more than $1 billion recovered in over 45,000 cases and more than 50 years of combined legal experience, the attorneys at Avrek Law have the skill and dedication you want on your side. Find out how we can help with a free Garden Grove accident consultation – contact us today!
