A 68-year-old Rancho Santa Margarita woman is dead after her motorcycle veered off a rural stretch of State Route 79 near Warner Springs and slammed into a boulder, killing her at the scene. The solo crash happened around 10:15 a.m. Saturday as she rode south through the winding San Diego County highway on a 2020 Harley-Davidson.
According to details reported by the MyNewsLA.com, the woman's motorcycle left the roadway just north of Fink Road before striking the boulder. The California Highway Patrol has withheld her name pending family notification, and the agency reported the route, vehicle and crash details to the outlet.
CHP Public-Affairs Officer Jasmine Lopez said the investigation into the crash remains ongoing, and that it is not yet known whether drugs or alcohol played a role. No cause for the crash has been determined.
A Stretch of Highway With a Deadly History
State Route 79 through the Warner Springs area has been the site of other fatal motorcycle crashes in recent months. Andrew James Netherton, 52, died after his motorcycle crashed on SR-79 near Orchard Lane in Julian on July 3, as reported by the San Diego Union-Tribune. That same day, Thomas Alan McDonald, 70, suffered fatal blunt-force head and neck trauma in a motorcycle crash on nearby State Route 67 near Vigilante Road, the paper's report notes.
A separate crash on a winding stretch of SR-79 near Warner Springs killed David Emory McDaniel, a 59-year-old Riverside County man, according to Patch. Authorities said McDaniel's motorcycle slammed into the front of a Ford E350 camper. Another fatal motorcycle crash involved 56-year-old Michael James Guerrero, who died on June 25 after colliding with another vehicle on H Street near Second Avenue in Chula Vista, per the same Union-Tribune report.
Motorcycle Deaths Remain a Significant Share of Statewide Fatalities
Motorcyclists accounted for 14 percent of California's motor vehicle fatalities in 2023, with 583 riders killed statewide, according to a SafeTREC traffic safety report. That figure actually represented a decline, with motorcycle fatalities dropping 10.2 percent between 2022 and 2023, the report found.
Rural roads, like the stretch of SR-79 where Saturday's crash occurred, made up 27 percent of California's fatal motorcycle crashes in 2023, per SafeTREC. The same report found that weekends are especially dangerous for riders, with 41.4 percent of fatal motorcycle crashes in the state occurring on Saturdays and Sundays, and that unsafe speed was the most common primary factor in fatal and serious-injury motorcycle crashes, cited in 28.2 percent of cases.
CHP has not released further details on the Rancho Santa Margarita woman's identity or the circumstances that led her motorcycle to leave the roadway. The investigation into Saturday's crash continues.
