A Tesla plowed into a California Highway Patrol cruiser on eastbound Interstate 80 near Fairfield late Tuesday night, injuring two officers who were investigating a separate, fatal crash just up the road. The collision happened around 11:45 p.m. west of Air Base Parkway, triggering lane closures that snarled traffic for hours into Wednesday morning.
According to CBS News, four CHP officers were already on scene working an earlier two-vehicle crash when the Tesla, driven by a 22-year-old man from Sacramento, passed through the department's flare and cone pattern and struck one of the patrol cars. Two officers were inside that cruiser at the time. Both were taken to NorthBay Hospital in Fairfield.
The two crashes were separate but happened on the same stretch of eastbound I-80 near the Air Base Parkway off-ramp, according to kcra.com. The first crash, around 10:45 p.m., involved two vehicles and killed one person. The second, involving the Tesla and the CHP cruiser, happened 61 minutes later, at around 11:46 p.m.
Conflicting Accounts of the Officers' Condition
Accounts of the officers' condition differ depending on the source. CBS News reported that CHP said the officers were taken to NorthBay Hospital and were expected to survive. KCRA, however, reported that the two officers suffered major injuries but have since been released from the hospital. Both crashes remain under investigation.
The crash forced a major disruption to overnight travel through Solano County. Four lanes on eastbound I-80 were closed, with traffic diverted off the freeway at Air Base Parkway and funneled into the single remaining open lane, per the seed report. Just before 7 a.m. Wednesday, the other four eastbound lanes were still closed.
Part of a Troubling Pattern Involving Teslas and Emergency Scenes
The Fairfield crash is the latest in a string of California incidents in which Teslas have struck stationary emergency vehicles. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has an ongoing study of such cases, according to mercurynews.com, which reported that all the Teslas examined in those cases were confirmed to have been using Autopilot or Traffic Aware Cruise Control, with most crashes happening at night near flashing lights, flares or cones.
In one case cited by the outlet, a Tesla Model 3 drove through road flares at a Simi Valley freeway crash scene and hit a firefighter and a fire truck; the firefighter suffered serious injuries and was taken to a trauma center. The same report pointed to a 2023 crash in Walnut Creek in which a driver died after her Tesla Model S struck a fire truck on Interstate 680, also injuring her passenger and four firefighters.
Fairfield has seen this kind of collision before. In a separate incident described by ktvu.com, a driver struck a single CHP cruiser that was blocking a slow lane because of another wreck involving a Dodge Ram. In that incident, one CHP officer was treated and released from the hospital, while a second officer who had been standing outside the cruiser was not hurt.
Patrol vehicles parked on California freeways have been struck in other circumstances as well. A four-vehicle crash on westbound I-80 east of Reed Avenue injured a CHP sergeant and three other drivers, according to sacbee.com, after an Acura RDX collided with three vehicles including a CHP Chevrolet Tahoe patrol vehicle.
As of Wednesday, CHP has not released further details on the condition of the two officers hurt in the Fairfield crash, and both the fatal first collision and the Tesla crash that followed it remain under investigation.
