BAKERSFIELD, Calif. -- Some residents and shoppers are complaining that there have been too many crashes near the newly opened Wal-Mart Supercenter off Panama Lane.

Both police and city traffic engineers say they will investigate. Police report four rear-end crashes in just one week since the big store opened.

"We would consider that a cluster," police Sgt. Allan Abney said Friday afternoon. The officer said all the crashes have been noninjury.

Gail Hodge lives near the big, new store, and she had seen three of the accidents.

"It's bad," she said. Hodge thinks the problem is all the traffic that backs up on Panama Lane trying to turn into the shopping center.

She thinks drivers coming east up over Highway 99 don't see the blocked lanes ahead of them until it's too late.

"As soon as you get on top of that (freeway) bridge, then people all of a sudden, they stop because of traffic," she said.

Two left turn lanes were put in going eastbound on Panama, Abney noted. But even on a quiet Friday afternoon both lanes were filled up, and traffic backed up.

He also thinks that's probably the cause of the accidents.

"We attribute that to overflow coming into the traffic lot," Abney said. "Traffic backing up, someone not seeing someone stopped."

Abney said the traffic accident reports will go to the city street and engineering department.

"We send the accident data to them, they review it and look at roadway design," he said.

Abney said engineers could recommend changing the timing on the traffic signals.

"They could look at the cycle of the lights, cycling the lights quicker and giving this turn lane priority," he said.

He said with the Wal-Mart is so close to the freeway, that limits what they can do with do improve traffic flow.

But police officers will also be in the area to see if drivers are to blame for the rash of fender benders.

"Any time we see a cluster of accidents, what we try to do is send out officers to observe the area," Abney said.

And, it may be a combination of drivers getting used to a new traffic pattern and the road design. There's one more tactic that could be used to deal with the problem -- lower the speed limit. Abney said traffic engineers will also consider that.

"They'll come back out, resurvey the roadway to see what the mean traffic speed is," he said.