Days after five people died in a head-on collision along Highway 395, motorist Marilyn Myers vented her frustration about the mostly two-lane road.

"It's murderous. It's treacherous," she said, filling her gas tank during her third trip that week between her dog-breeding and training business near Edwards Air Force Base and dog shows throughout Southern California.

"It definitely needs more lanes. If it was a freeway, it would be better," she said.

Lured by the snow-covered slopes of Mammoth Mountain, skiers clog the highway most winter weekends. Truckers use part of Highway 395 to bypass Los Angeles while hauling loads between the Central Valley and Southern California. And travelers -- many in motor homes -- follow the road along the eastern edge of the Sierra.

The highway extends to Canada.

"It's a beautiful highway, don't get me wrong," said trucker Jack Evans of Adelanto. "But when there's traffic on it, it's dangerous.

"Eating a sandwich or talking on the mobile phone, it's too easy for you to drift across that double-yellow line. And the driver going the other direction don't have nowhere to go except up in the dirt," he said.

Forty-one people died -- about 10 annually -- from 1997 to 2000 along the 36 miles between Interstate 15 and Kramer Summit, according to statistics compiled by Officer Tim Smith of the California Highway Patrol office in Victorville. That five people already have died, in a head-on crash on Jan. 21, suggests that this year may exceed the average.

Major widening or replacement of the old road will take at least 10 to 15 years, state and regional transportation experts estimate. But cheaper and faster options can dramatically improve safety along Highway 395, say officials who successfully modified a similarly troubled road near San Luis Obispo.

For two years, Caltrans has been studying the feasibility of improving Highway 395 along a 100-mile stretch between Interstate 15 in Hesperia and Highway 14 in Kern County.

"Realistically, . . . we're going to concentrate on Interstate 15 to Highway 58," Caltrans official Doug Hogue said of the southernmost 42 miles, which pass through Hesperia, Victorville and Adelanto and continue across open desert.

Hogue is chief transportation planner for the Caltrans district headquarters in San Bernardino.

"We think we're going to need a freeway from I-15 to Purple Sage Road," he said, referring to a 17-mile stretch. "The whole rest of it would be (limited-access) expressway."

The only certainty is that it will not happen soon. Even the routing has not been determined. There are four proposed layouts, including one that would parallel the existing highway up to one mile to the west.

"I hope to see construction within 10 years," Hogue said. "But everything has to fall into place. And there has to be money. I can't emphasize enough that we have to compete (for funding) statewide."

Hogue realizes the entire 100-mile stretch will not be rebuilt in even 20 years. But he is seeking environmental approval for the whole distance, in hopes of identifying problems early.

"If we do get into this project, we don't want to get stopped by things we didn't know about," he said.

In the meantime, officials in San Luis Obispo say teamwork, creativity, and some old-fashioned political arm-twisting could greatly reduce the body count along Highway 395, just as it did along their Highway 46.

"It had the nickname `Blood Alley,' " said Tom Jones, who heads the San Luis Obispo district office of state Sen. Jack O'Connell, D-Santa Barbara.

Like Highway 395, the two-lane Highway 46 is heavily traveled, with nearly 20 percent of its traffic trucks and slow-moving recreational vehicles.

It is an unlighted and isolated road, yet it connects Interstate 5 in the Central Valley to Highway 101 in San Luis Obispo. And it is the main route for the region's agriculture and heavy industry, along with beach-goers from the Central Valley and travelers from Northern and Southern California.

Step one in the solution is a safety study, Jones said.

"Instead of throwing 20 cops out there, you really need to know if it's an engineering problem, a motorist problem, or an enforcement problem," he said. "Usually, it's going to be a combination of the three."

But no study will do any good unless the agencies and groups are working together on the solution. So Sen. O'Connell and CHP Commissioner Dwight Helmick launched a local task force and paved the way for grant money from the state Office of Traffic Safety.

The broad but carefully coordinated local effort was backed by state and federal lawmakers.

Asked about the clout that was needed to overcome bureaucratic red tape, Jones was circumspect. "There was a lot of persuading," he said. "There was a lot of persuading."

It worked.

"We were averaging eight (fatalities) a year," said Ron DeCarli, executive director of San Luis Obispo Council of Governments. "Since then: a 50 percent decrease in the number killed."

How?

Driver education and media blitzes helped, along with intense CHP patrols. Permanent improvements included high-visibility roadway striping, reflectors and rumble strips that vibrate the tires of a drifting car, jolting the driver to attention.

"If you've got reflectors every 20 feet, that roadway just shines like a runway at night," DeCarli said. "It snaps them out of fatigue."

Mostly, he said, it takes creativity and commitment from all the affected agencies and groups, including advocacy organizations.

"In San Bernardino, with a county that big, they're never going to have money to do everything," he said. "It makes sense to look at the low-cost options until they can implement the long-term solution."

Richard Brooks can be reached at rbrooks@pe.com or at (909) 890-4452.