The SAPD posted early this moring on X, at around 1:30 a.m., that they were investigating a fatal traffic collision involving a single vehicle that crashed into a tree. They closed Segerstrom Avenue between Raitt Street and Greenville Street while investigating the accident but you knew this was a bad one when they also noted two hours ago that the media staging area for this incident would be located at the South corners of Townsend Street and Segerstrom Avenue.
The accident turned out to be a horrific one. There were six people inside one car and more than half of the victims turned out to be local teens.
The responding officers found six victims including five females and one male had been hurt in the collision. The preliminary police investigation revealed that the male driver was driving at a high rate of speed, westbound on Segerstrom, when he missed a turn and collided with a tree.
The crash happened in the area of West Segerstrom Avenue and South Townsend Street at around 11:30 p.m.
The result was breathtakingly awful. Four of the victims were pronounced dead at the scene. The reamining two victims are at local hospitals in critical condition.
At least two of the victims were ejected from the car, which likely means they were not using seat belts. A nearby black sedan was slightly damaged during the collision but no one inside that vehicle was injured, as reported by KTLA.
Police investigators believe that impairment may have played a role in the crash.
The young people, including two sets of sisters, were all apparently friends connected through Valley High School in Santa Ana.
The SAPD later confirmed that four of the victims were teenagers and the other two were adults.
Video footage shows that a large number of police officers were deployed to the accident scene and a fire crew used a ladder to access the vehicle, which was utterly wrecked. The remains of the vehicle lay next to the tree, in the center median.
Spelling error
Thanks. I’ll check again.
traffic engineering “research” is outdated and unexamined and often steered by an industry and culture considering only how to get from point A to B the fastest way possible, to the detriment of safety
Not really sure what you’re suggesting here. Care to elaborate? The article suggests that a young driver with a car full of un-belted passengers who was possibly impaired on drugs and/or alcohol was driving so fast that he or she lost control and crashed. I see tragic decision-making, not bad engineering.