Dead man's curve

Dead Man's Curve, left, has been blocked off. Instead, drivers take the road at right.
Photo by Rod Thompson, Star-Bulletin

The worst spot is closed off, but the area is still deadly

By Rod Thompson
Star-Bulletin

So many people were injured along the curve that the state Highways Division had been trying for 15 years to get it fixed when motorist Diana Smith and her unborn baby were severely injured in a two-vehicle accident in 1991.

Her attorneys later discovered there were 59 accidents at or near the curve in the four years preceding Smith's accident.

In 1992 the Highways Division eliminated the curve and made other improvements.

Still, 36 more accidents took place in a three-mile stretch near the curve from 1991 to 1994, the most recent statistics show.

"South Kona probably has the most dangerous roads in the state," said Smith's attorney, Kevin Seiter.

Jim Stutheit, president of the community association in Ocean View where Smith lives, knows that from experience. To get from his remote community of about 1,000 homes to the population center in Kailua-Kona, he has to drive the hillside road with a steep drop-off on one side.

"One little mistake and you've had it," he said.

Two curves were fixed in 1992, but Stutheit guessed there might be 40 more in the area still needing work.

Although the drive to Hilo is half again as long as the drive to Kailua-Kona, Stutheit has heard Ocean View people say they'd rather go to Hilo because the road is better.

There is no question the road is still dangerous, said Lot Grace, 69, a lifelong resident of South Kona.

"The thing is, you have to watch what you're doing," he said. "Don't go speeding on this highway. You don't know what's coming around the corner."

Grace remembers the days in the 1930s when the road was unpaved.

"Way back then you can sit on the road and hear the car coming," he said. A car passed every two or three hours then.

Nowadays drivers zip through going up to 70 mph in a 35 mph zone, he said.

Police Lt. Ernest Correa also recognizes the danger of the road.

"It is far from adequate to handle the volume that currently exists," he said. New subdivisions are being built in South Kona, generating more traffic, and laid-off Kau sugar workers are driving the road to new jobs in Kona, he said.

Diana Smith said that even before her accident she felt the danger as a knot of tension in her neck as she drove.

She feels a little better since the improvements have been made.

"The lump in the back of your neck is a little smaller now," she said.

Smith, 28 weeks pregnant, was driving toward North Kona about 7:30 a.m. Oct. 17, 1991, when her car rounded the curve and ran head-on into a water tank truck.

Each lane of the road was just 91/2 feet wide, said Lawrence Cohn, attorney for Smith's daughter, Anna-Leigh Marlowe, who was born prematurely and brain-damaged because of the accident.

The tank truck was 81/2 feet wide, leaving just six inches on each side if the truck had been

perfectly in the center of its lane. Scrape marks show it was partially in Smith's lane, Cohn said.

Smith was hospitalized for more than a month and required more than a year to recover. She still has some physical and mental impairments, Seiter said.

Her daughter will require $3 million to $7 million in future care, the attorney general acknowledged in a report to the Legislature.

Smith's husband, Mark Marlowe, had to quit his job to take care of his wife and daughter.

A $955,000 settlement of the state portion of the case is making its way through the Legislature. A suit is pending against truck driver Kurt Nakamoto and truck owner Kona Poultry Farm.