A wrong-way driver suffered major injuries Friday after plunging into a concrete flood-control channel just off Interstate 15 in Fontana, according to the California Highway Patrol. The driver had been heading south in the northbound lanes of the freeway south of Summit Avenue before the vehicle rolled into the wash.
The driver was allegedly traveling near the center divider before the vehicle went into the channel, CHP told KTLA. Emergency crews rushed the driver to a hospital, but the person's current condition was not known as of Friday. Investigators said the driver is not suspected of driving under the influence, and the cause of the crash remains under investigation.
CHP Urges Drivers to Stay Alert
In the wake of the crash, the California Highway Patrol reminded the motoring public to stay vigilant on the roadways for unforeseen circumstances, adding that, as the agency put it, “together we can make the roadways safe for our families.” No further details on how the vehicle ended up going the wrong direction have been released.
Wrong-way crashes remain rare in California but tend to be severe when they happen. They account for less than half of one percent of crashes statewide, according to ABC7 News, though a Caltrans web post has separately put the figure at under one-tenth of one percent. The same ABC7 report notes that wrong-way drivers kill an average of 500 people a year nationwide, and that CHP logged 208 such crashes statewide in 2019, 220 in 2020 and 296 in 2021.
A Stretch of Freeway With a History
Friday's crash happened on the same general stretch of Interstate 15 near Summit Avenue where a wrong-way crash in October 2022 killed three people, according to a report from Pain in the Pass. In that earlier incident, a driver entered the freeway the wrong way up the Summit Avenue southbound exit ramp, and a red Kia Rio collided with a black Honda Civic near the Sierra Avenue exit.
Fontana has seen other deadly wrong-way collisions in recent years. A wrong-way driver on the 210 Freeway collided head-on with another vehicle west of the Citrus Avenue offramp, killing three people and injuring three others, per CBS News Los Angeles. And just last month, a wrong-way crash on the 91 Freeway in Riverside killed one man and injured two others when a Ford Flex traveling the wrong direction struck a Honda Civic and a Toyota Corolla, as reported by the Press-Enterprise. The driver of the Ford, 59-year-old Daniel Romo Jr. of Moreno Valley, died at a hospital in that crash.
Caltrans Has Pushed Prevention Measures
Caltrans has pointed to infrastructure fixes as one way to curb wrong-way crashes. A Sacramento-area pilot program using reflective highway markers produced a 60 percent drop in wrong-way drivers in 2018, the agency has said, according to ABC7's reporting. Caltrans District 11, which covers San Diego and Imperial counties, has separately said it worked through a Director's Order to upgrade wrong-way-driver infrastructure at 74 ramps across 13 routes that had experienced such collisions.
No details on the vehicle involved, the driver's identity or an exact crash time have been released, and CHP has not provided an explanation for how the driver ended up traveling against traffic on I-15. The investigation into Friday's crash remains open.
