A wrong-way driver barreling into oncoming traffic on the 91 Freeway touched off a three-vehicle crash that killed three people early Thursday near 14th Street in Riverside, authorities say. The crash was reported shortly after 2 a.m., and officials say a vehicle had been traveling eastbound in the westbound lanes moments before the collision.
According to ABC7 Los Angeles, the vehicles involved included a white SUV, a black BMW and a big rig, and a witness reported seeing a driver speeding in the wrong direction just before the collision. Officers who arrived at the scene found lifeless bodies inside the BMW, the station reports, while a fourth person was taken to a hospital in unknown condition. The identity of the wrong-way vehicle remained unclear as of the station's report, and the incident remains under investigation.
A separate accounting from KTLA describes the same three-vehicle incident as involving a big rig, an SUV and a sedan, citing the California Highway Patrol's traffic incident log for the time and location of the crash. The station reports that the CHP received calls moments before the crash describing a wrong-way driver swerving between cars at a high rate of speed. KTLA also reports that officials had not confirmed which vehicles were involved in the three fatalities, nor released the identities of the victims, as of its report.
Conflicting Accounts of Which Vehicle Overturned
Exactly which vehicle flipped during the crash is disputed in early accounts. KTLA reported that video from the scene showed the sedan had overturned, while the SUV and big rig both sustained extensive front-end damage. A separate transcription of the CHP incident log posted by chpfatal.com, however, describes the white SUV as having turned onto its side in a collision involving the big rig and a black, four-door sedan. The discrepancy between the two accounts had not been resolved as of this report.
The crash forced the closure of several westbound lanes and the 14th Street on-ramp, snarling the morning commute. The incident-log transcription from chpfatal.com notes that the 14th Street on-ramp to westbound 91 was closed with only the carpool lane open by 4:47 a.m. The same report notes a SigAlert was issued for the closure of all westbound lanes for an unknown duration.
A Second Wrong-Way Crash on the Same Freeway This Fall
Thursday's crash is not the only wrong-way collision to hit the 91 Freeway in Riverside in recent months. On September 6, a three-vehicle, wrong-way crash on the same freeway killed one man and injured two people, according to The Press-Enterprise. In that incident, a Ford Flex traveling westbound in the eastbound lanes collided head-on with a Honda Civic and then a Toyota Corolla east of University Avenue, the newspaper reported. The Ford's driver, identified by the coroner as 59-year-old Moreno Valley resident Daniel Romo Jr., died at a hospital, and all three drivers involved in that crash were hospitalized, per the same account.
Wrong-way crashes remain a persistent, if statistically small, slice of collisions on California's freeways. A Caltrans report excerpt found that wrong-way collisions made up about 0.24 percent of crashes on California freeways and expressways in 1987, dropping to roughly 0.15 percent by 2013 — an approximate 37.5 percent decrease, though the available excerpt of that report is incomplete and does not detail current trends.
No further details about the people killed in Thursday's crash, or about the condition of the fourth person taken to the hospital, had been released as investigators continued working the scene. The report out of Riverside remains developing, and authorities have not said when more information might be available.
