Three people are killed in one weekend amid dystopian reality of Car Week.

Car Week has come and gone, another year of revving engines and traffic jams and $748 million in auction sales. At Exotics on Broadway, billed as “the people’s show” in Seaside, police officers armed with long rifles observed the event from rooftops as a safety precaution, a grim reminder that any crowded event these days can quickly turn deadly.

“The reality of today’s world requires us to prepare for the worst while always hoping for the best,” Seaside Police Chief Nick Borges writes.

The reality is that the worst did also happen, with cars themselves – motor vehicle crashes left three people dead in the final weekend of Car Week.

California Highway Patrol responded to two fatal collisions on Saturday, Aug. 15. One, at 2pm on Esperanza Road near Chualar, left bicyclist Juan Roberto Lopez-Gomez of Gonzales dead at the scene. A semi truck, driven by a 61-year-old from Yuma, Arizona, collided with 58-year-old Lopez-Gomez while the driver was turning right onto Old Stage Road. CHP has released little information, such as the suspected cause of the crash or whether the cyclist was wearing a helmet.

A few hours later, at 8:23pm, 47-year-old Brian Roberts was walking across Highway 1 near Palo Colorado when a 20-year-old from Fresno driving a Dodge coupe hit and killed the Big Sur resident, who had worked at Ventana resort for 20-some years.

CHP reports that drugs or alcohol are not believed to have played a role in either crash.

At 5:14pm on Sunday, Aug. 16, as Car Week was winding down, a silver BMW convertible occupied by four friends visiting from the East Bay was driving from Carmel through Monterey when the vehicle hit a tree. All four occupants were injured; one passenger, 19-year-old Jerrod Tyson Chapman-Marshall, was killed.

The case remains under investigation but Monterey Police Lt. Ethan Andrews says the 20-year-old driver will be arrested on charges of vehicular manslaughter and maybe more, depending on what police learn in their investigation. (Police report his blood alcohol concentration was 0.13 percent, above the 0.08 legal limit.)

“In an instant, it goes from fun to a tragedy.”

Andrews says Monterey PD is always on alert for illegal conduct on the road, especially during Car Week. “Obviously it does not make us very popular with a lot of car enthusiasts that come, because they are looking for a fun car experience,” he says. “Unfortunately sometimes that fun experience is to see cars operating unsafely or recklessly. We remind folks it doesn’t take much for a car to lose control. In an instant, it goes from a fun experience to a tragedy. It happens fast and once it happens, there is no going back.”

Motor vehicle crashes remain the single biggest cause of death for young people. And every one of those deaths is preventable.

William Perlstein spent 30 years working for CHP and during that career, saw more mangled human remains at the scenes of crashes than anyone would care to. After he retired, he acquired the driving school Drive Carmel, hoping to help prevent at least some of those unnecessary future deaths.

He asks his students if they’ve ever been a passenger in a car with a driver who is texting, a practice that makes a driver 23 times more likely to be in a crash, he says. Regularly, 90 percent raise their hands. “It’s shocking,” he says. “That is just so scary and so problematic.”

But even with the allure of screens, Perlstein says, “What kills most people, still, is speeding. And driving under the influence is extraordinarily dangerous.” These, it would seem, are easy problems to solve – and speeding is something that Car Week traffic can actually help to mitigate. But unlike, say, aviation – which includes extensive redundancy – Perlstein notes motor vehicle collisions can result from just a single error. (He is careful to avoid using the word “accident,” because most of these are not.)

We entrust each other and ourselves with immense responsibility every time we get in a car.

A body count of three in one weekend in Monterey County is a painful reminder that real people face potentially devastating consequences from cars. It’s easy and fun to glorify them on the auction block or a car show, but all of us should operate according to principles of safety – it is a matter of life and death.

SARA RUBIN is the Weekly’s editor. Reach her at sara@montereycountynow.com