This morning, we receive news from Palo Alto, CA of a mother who was seriously injured after she was hit by a juvenile driving a car in a residential neighborhood.
Elsewhere today: Sedan into the back of a big rig on I-5 near Orland, CA results in driver fatality.
Tuesday:
- Very confusing set of dispatches of a crash on Highway 1 near the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA is coded as a fatality, but I can’t find a news report of this one. If you’d like to try to decode the dispatches, the chronology is bottom to top and begins “XRAY IS CLIMBING OO VEH” which is cop slang for “women is climbing out of vehicle.” From there, we have reports of tow trucks and fire engines stuck in traffic and, eventually, a request for evidence tow.
- Rollover crash in Half Moon Bay claims a life. This is the third automobile fatality on Highway 1 between Half Moon Bay and Devil’s Slide in two weeks.
Sunday: Oakland man fatally struck in Gilroy, CA.
Saturday: Car vs tree on San Tomas Expressway near Moorpark in San Jose, CA last Saturday results in driver fatality.
Friday:
- Driver pronounced dead on Highway 101 near Healdburg, CA. CHP dispatch says, “WITNESS SAW HIM HIT MANY TREES // HIT VERY HARD.”
- Highway 1 north of Point Reyes closed for three hours after a truck lost it on a turn.
ETC:
- Monterey County attorney seeks witnesses in their investigation of a man who ran over and killed two women on foot on East Laurel Drive last November. This was a hit and run with suspected DUI.
- Can you obey traffic laws better than a fifth grader? Tell me if this makes any sense. The city of Berkeley plans to reduce speed limits around school zones to improve safety. Berkeley police say this won’t work because adult drivers are an unruly, unmanageable lot who don’t obey speed limits. They claim instead that children should learn how to behave better around cars.
- We have these “Drive like your kids live here” signs in Santa Cruz, too. Watch this outstanding report from walnut Creek by Stanley Roberts:
- Nobody seems to know about this so I’ll repeat it: Santa Cruz DA investigating the Highway 1 fatality of cyclist Joshua Alper. “High priority case,” says county attorney Bob Lee.
- Let’s wrap things up with this unbelievable story of a teen who killed four pedestrians and was let go because of “affluenza.”
Sixteen-year-old Ethan Couch admitted to four counts of manslaughter after he and seven other boys stole alcohol from Walmart, piled into his car and struck and killed four pedestrians while going 70 miles per hour in a 40 zone. One of his passengers remains in the hospital with severe brain damage, and nine other bystanders were also injured.
Couch’s defense was that he was a victim of his parents’ wealth and privilege; in that he never had to face consequences.
The judge — with no apparent irony — agreed with the boy’s defense.
