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Malibu’s Highway to the Stars strikes again

Mel Gibson is only the latest celebrity to find trouble on an infamous stretch of the scenic Pacific Coast Highway.A wild-eyed Nick Nolte was immortalized in a 2002 mug shot taken after he was caught weaving along the road under the influence of the drug GHB. Robert Downey Jr. was taken into custody in 1996 after authorities stopped him for speeding on the winding, beach-side highway and found coc
/ Source: The Associated Press

Mel Gibson is only the latest celebrity to find trouble on an infamous stretch of the scenic Pacific Coast Highway.

A wild-eyed Nick Nolte was immortalized in a 2002 mug shot taken after he was caught weaving along the road under the influence of the drug GHB. Robert Downey Jr. was taken into custody in 1996 after authorities stopped him for speeding on the winding, beach-side highway and found cocaine, heroin and a pistol in his car.

With a huge number of celebrity homes nearby and murderously twisty terrain, PCH, as it's known, has ensnared more than its share of superstars.

Filled with blind spots and hairpin curves wrapped around some of the most beautifully distracting scenery in the country, PCH has been called an accident waiting to happen.

"At best, stone cold sober, and not fatigued and at 2:30 a.m., it is a difficult road to drive," said Arnold G. York, publisher of the local newspaper, The Malibu Times. "No traffic engineer in his right mind would have designed it this way."

Drivers are supposed to slow to 45 mph through Malibu but — except during rush-hour traffic jams when they have no choice — few ever do.

Not that alcohol, drugs or even bad driving is necessarily involved when a celebrity gets in trouble along Malibu's main drag.

Last December, Drake Bell of the hit teen TV show "Drake & Josh" suffered a broken jaw, broken neck and had seven teeth knocked out when his vintage Ford Mustang was struck by another vehicle as he waited to make a left turn from PCH onto another street.

"I was hit head-on at 60 miles per hour while I was at a dead stop," the 20-year-old Bell, who also recovered, told The Associated Press recently.

Authorities say Gibson was traveling at 87 mph, with a bottle of tequila in the car, when his 2006 Lexus LS 430 was stopped Friday morning at 2:36 a.m.

As a result, Hollywood loves PCH. It is a favorite location for television commercials and it was the lead player in the James Garner series "The Rockford Files." Before that, America saw it in the 1960s "Beach Party" movies starring Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello.

Even its pit stops have show business names — there is Dan Blocker State Beach and Michael Landon Community Center, named for the late "Bonanza" TV stars. Leo Carrillo State Park Beach is named for the pioneering Latino actor who played Duncan Renaldo's sidekick in the 1950s TV series "The Cisco Kid."

Almost equally well-known are the sites of some of the highway's more infamous accidents.

Many tourists and locals alike can point out where actresses Shannen Doherty and Bridget Fonda survived traffic accidents.

The highway has even turned at least one person into a celebrity.

Bo Stefan Eriksson, now known in Malibu as the "Ferrari Guy," was driving a rare Ferrari Enzo at 162 mph — about twice as fast as Gibson was going — when he lost control of it one morning last February. He hit a power pole and destroyed a vehicle valued at $1.5 million.

Eriksson, a former executive for a bankrupt European computer game company, is now awaiting trial on charges of grand theft, embezzlement and drunken driving.

"That happened right outside where we live," said 17-year-old Malibu resident Thruv Mehrotra.