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Los Alamos County crash leads to rush-hour backup for lab workers
Apr 8, 2025
A multivehicle crash with injuries slowed traffic in Los Alamos on Tuesday afternoon, causing a massive backup in the evening as workers from the national laboratory were trying to head down the Hill after their shifts.
Los Alamos County spokesperson Leslie described the crash as "severe."
The crash, on N.M. 502 near Camino Entrada, occurred at 2:30 p.m. The highway was closed in both directions for about four hours, opening around 6:20 p.m., as Los Alamos police investigated the scene.
Published comment by Greg Mello:
Driver error, as Khal rightly says. Nearly all vehicle accidents are. There is also another framework for viewing the now-more common accidents on this road. In addition to driver error, these are also "normal accidents" (Charles Perrow). If traffic loads are increased, including commutes both long (up to 200 miles per day) and short, there will be more accidents. If housing costs in Los Alamos double, as they have, and availability of housing declines to low levels, as it has, more people will commute. And more people are commuting.
Looking at the big picture, LANL has badly outgrown its geographic situation, its local infrastructure including worker housing, its electrical supply, and is trying to grow even further, at the expense of more congestion, physical and economic, and a variety of negative regional impacts. A sense of proportion has been sacrificed to ideology. Let's make it personal. Thom Mason is a highly ideological leader, not a scientist. Asked to justify LANL expansion, he responds with the required cant about our "adversaries" Russia and China and the expected subservience to national policy. What a load of bull. At the very top and across senior management, LANL and its NNSA minders have abandoned rationality to become mere instruments, for the money and misplaced prestige among their peers. Tools. And that is what the lower-down employees are as well. This may seem far afield from a single traffic accident but it is not. It comes back to the oh-so-sacred "mission," the reason LANL leaders cite for unprecedented growth. It is ius why the roads are overloaded, why the new power line across the Caja del Rio "must" be built (and now we see that even that may not be enough), and all the rest. Sacrifice, they say to the region, for our sacred mission.
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