Can a Documentary Save Lives?

In April 2010, movie producer Michel Shane kissed his daughter Emily goodbye and sent her off to a slumber party. The next afternoon, as she walked alongside the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu, Calif., to meet him at their designated pickup spot for her ride home, a speeding motorist swerved off the road and struck her, killing her.

Emily became yet another victim of a road nicknamed “Blood Alley.”

An exquisite scenic drive, but the Pacific Coast highway is also one of the most deadly.

The highway’s a top kill-zone for traffic in the United States. Although Malibu only has thirteen thousand residents, its accident rate resembles a city with a population in the hundreds of thousands.

The problem is getting worse.

During a four-month time frame in 2010, eight people were killed along a five-mile stretch in the beach-side enclave. Rescue sirens commingle with crashing waves on a daily basis. They remind residents the idyllic drive through paradise is deadly. Michel Shane, the executive producer of Catch Me if You Can and I, Robot, hopes to end the senseless loss of life – in his community and others across the country – by doing what he knows best: telling the story on film.

“Documentaries have created movements, and in creating the documentary, we will identify workable solutions. I’m hoping Emily’s story and the stories of other who have died on Pacific Coast Highway will establish the template for every community cursed with a deadly stretch of highway,” says Shane.