A woman died after crashing a vehicle into a tree in Valley Center on Sunday evening.

The crash occurred at the intersection of Rock Hill Ranch and Valley Center roads around 7:15 p.m. Sunday, according to the California Highway Patrol.

The woman was temporarily trapped in her vehicle, the CHP reported. Her name was withheld pending notification of next of kin.

It was unclear if drugs or alcohol were factors in the crash.

No other injuries were reported and the crash remainder under investigation.

City News Service contributed to this article.

Authorities Monday publicly identified two motorcyclists who died in separate San Diego-area traffic crashes over the weekend.

The first of the two deadly accidents occurred about 11:45 p.m. Saturday, when a Kawasaki two-wheeler being ridden by 68-year-old Mark Darulis of La Mesa struck a broken-down car on northbound Interstate 805, near East J Street in Chula Vista, according to the San Diego County Medical Examiner’s Office.

Darulis died at the scene of the crash, the agency reported.

The second motorcycle fatality took place about 7:45 p.m. Sunday, when Megan Vilardi, 40, lost control of the northbound Harley-Davidson she was riding on Via Monserate in Fallbrook, sending it crashing into a roadside retaining wall near Orange Hill.

Paramedics took Vilardi, a Fallbrook resident, to Palomar Medical Center in Escondido, where she was pronounced dead shortly after arrival, according to the medical examiner.

–City News Service

Oceanside police will conduct a DUI checkpoint at an undisclosed location on the evening of Jan. 5.

DUI checkpoints are located based on data showing incidents of impaired driving-related crashes, officials said. The Jan. 5 checkpoint will be conducted from 6 p.m. to midnight.

“Impaired drivers put others on the road at significant risk,” said Oceanside Police Sgt. Clint Bussey. “Any prevention measures that reduce the number of impaired drivers on our roads significantly improves traffic safety.”

Oceanside police reminded the public that impaired driving is not just from alcohol, but also can be from prescription medications and over-the-counter drugs which may interfere with driving performance.

While medicinal and recreational marijuana are legal, driving under the influence of marijuana is illegal.

First-time DUI drivers face an average of $13,500 in fines and penalties as well as a suspended license, police said.

City News Service contributed to this article.

A 22-year-old man was taken to the hospital after he crashed his vehicle into a wall outside of a Del Mar home Friday.

The solo crash happened just before 5 a.m. at 4957 El Camino Real, according to the California Highway Patrol.

The man suffered minor injuries, according to the CHP.

Officials were investigating the collision.

–City News Service

 A DUI suspect was jailed early Monday morning after crashing his car into an unoccupied patio-dining area at a Gaslamp-area restaurant that was closed for the night, authorities reported.

The crash occurred about 1:45 a.m. at Operacaffe, 835 Fourth Ave., according to the San Diego Police Department.

Officers arrested the 28-year-old driver and took him to a hospital for a precautionary evaluation before he was booked into San Diego Central Jail on suspicion of driving while intoxicated, SDPD spokesman Scott Lockwood said.

–City News Service

Ahead of Memorial Day weekend, Caltrans and the California Office of Traffic Safety (OTS) launched a wrong-way driver prevention campaign Tuesday in San Diego County to reduce deadly incidents.

On average, 37 people are killed each year in wrong-way crashes on California roads, according to the campaign. In 2019, there were 248 wrong-way crashes on state highways. Almost half of the involved drivers were under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

“This campaign addresses impaired driving as the common cause of wrong-way collisions, and we hope to significantly reduce crashes involving wrong-way drivers and other impaired drivers by enhancing public awareness,” said Caltrans District 11 Director Gustavo Dallarda.

In San Diego, the number of wrong-way drivers decreased by 44% during Caltrans’ initial pilot program that installed specialized reflectors, sensors and illuminated signs in 2018, according to the campaign.

The department has allocated nearly $9 million toward wrong-way driver prevention upgrades like red pavement reflectors and larger wrong-way warning signs on 74 highway ramps throughout San Diego County.

California Highway Patrol and Caltrans officials recommend if you see a wrong-way driver: 

• Move as quickly and as safely out of the way as possible. As soon as it is safe to do so, call 911 and report the driver. 
• While driving, maintain a high visual horizon to scan the environment on the road far ahead of where you are driving. This increases your ability to see roadway hazards far ahead and safely get out of the way. 
• Keep your headlights on at night. If a wrong-way driver sees headlights, they might realize they are going the wrong way. 
• Most importantly, avoid distractions, pay attention, and don’t drink and drive. 

Two pedestrians were struck and killed by vehicles Thursday on freeways in Carmel Valley and Mission Valley within five hours of each other, authorities reported.

The first of the two traffic fatalities took place on Interstate 5 at state Route 56 about 12:15 a.m., and the second occurred on Interstate 8 at I-5 shortly after 5 a.m., according to the California Highway Patrol.

The victims, men whose names were not immediately available, were both pronounced dead at the scene.

Neither driver was believed to be under the influence of alcohol or drugs at the time of the crashes, CHP public-affairs Officer Sal Castro said.

U.S. auto safety regulators said Monday they had opened a formal safety probe into Tesla Inc’s driver assistance system Autopilot in 765,000 U.S. vehicles built since 2014 after a series of crashes involving emergency vehicles.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said that since January 2018 it had identified 11 crashes in which Tesla models “have encountered first responder scenes and subsequently struck one or more vehicles involved with those scenes.”

Tesla shares fell 5% on the news.

After investigating, NHTSA could opt to take no action, or it could demand a recall, which might effectively impose limits on how, when and where Autopilot operates. Any restrictions could narrow the competitive gap between Tesla’s system and similar advanced driver assistance systems offered by established automakers.

The auto safety agency said it had reports of 17 injuries and one death in those crashes, including the December 2019 crash of a Tesla Model 3 that left a passenger dead after the vehicle collided with a parked fire truck in Indiana.

The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Chief Executive Elon Musk has repeatedly defended Autopilot and in April tweeted that “Tesla with Autopilot engaged now approaching 10 times lower chance of accident than average vehicle.”

NHTSA said the 11 crashes involved four this year, including a July 10 crash in San Diego, and it had opened a preliminary evaluation of Autopilot in 765,000 2014-2021 Tesla Models Y, X, S, and 3. The crashes involved vehicles “all confirmed to have been engaged in either Autopilot or Traffic Aware Cruise Control,” NHTSA said.

AFTER DARK

NHTSA said most of the 11 crashes took place after dark and crash scenes included measures like emergency vehicle lights, flares or road cones.

Musk tweeted last month Tesla’s advanced camera-only driver assistance system, known as “Tesla Vision,” will soon “capture turn signals, hazards, ambulance/police lights & even hand gestures.”

NHTSA said its investigation will assess technologies “used to monitor, assist, and enforce the driver’s engagement” with driving when using Autopilot operation.

Before NHTSA could demand a recall, it must first decide to upgrade an investigation into an engineering analysis. The two-step investigative process often takes a year or more.

Autopilot, which handles some driving tasks and allows drivers to keep their hands off the wheel for extended periods, was operating in at least three fatal Tesla U.S. crashes since 2016, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has said.

The NTSB has criticized Tesla’s lack of system safeguards for Autopilot and NHTSA’s failure to ensure the safety of Autopilot.

In February 2020, Tesla’s director of autonomous driving technology, Andrej Karpathy, identified a challenge for its Autopilot system: how to recognize when a parked police car’s emergency flashing lights are turned on.

“This is an example of a new task we would like to know about,” Karpathy said at a conference.

KEY CONCERNS

Bryant Walker Smith, a law professor at the University of South Carolina, said the parked emergency crashes “really seems to illustrate in vivid and even tragic fashion some of the key concerns with Tesla’s system.”

NHTSA, he suggested, “has been far too deferential and timid, particularly with respect to Tesla.”

One of the 11 crashes NHTSA cited was a January 2018 crash into a parked fire truck in California. NTSB said the system’s design “permitted the driver to disengage from the driving task,” in the Culver City crash.

NHTSA said Monday it had sent teams to review 31 Tesla crashes involving 10 deaths since 2016 where it suspected advanced driver assistance systems were in use. It ruled out Autopilot in three of the crashes.

In a statement, NHTSA reminded drivers “no commercially available motor vehicles today are capable of driving themselves.” The agency added that while driving assistance features can promote safety but “drivers must use them correctly and responsibly.”

Tesla and CEO Musk have sparred with U.S. agencies over various safety issues.

In February, Tesla agreed to recall 134,951 vehicles with touchscreen displays that could fail and raise the risk of a crash after NHTSA sought the recall.

Musk said last month on Twitter the automaker will hold “Tesla AI Day” on Thursday to “go over progress with Tesla AI software & hardware, both training & inference. Purpose is recruiting.”

In January 2017, NHTSA closed a preliminary evaluation into Autopilot covering 43,000 vehicles without taking any action after a nearly seven-month investigation.

NHTSA said at the time it “did not identify any defects in the design or performance” of Autopilot, “nor any incidents in which the systems did not perform as designed.”

NHTSA has not had a Senate-confirmed administrator since January 2017 and nearly seven months into office President Joe Biden has not nominated anyone for the post.

Elizabeth Ireland contributed to this report.

It’d be just another normal day, nearly 17 feet above Highway 101 in Agoura Hills. 

A southern alligator lizard and a western toad hide from the heat in the greenery of restored native vegetation. Mountain lion cubs pounce on rocks and spring into the nearby canyons. The sun glints on the feathers of a golden eagle soaring overhead.

This is the scene environmentalists hope will someday become reality on a massive overpass above the ten-lane freeway that cuts through the Santa Monica Mountains near Los Angeles. The project known as the Liberty Canyon Wildlife Crossing is one step closer to happening now that Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed a budget that includes $7 million to help build it — and another $54.5 million for similar projects in other parts of the state.   

It’s part of a larger nationwide push to build special bridges and tunnels that help animals safely cross busy roads and freeways. The goal is two-fold: to give species at risk the space they need to find mates, and to reduce the number of car crashes that imperil both wildlife and humans. 

About 7,000 vehicle crashes a year on California highways involve large wildlife, such as deer, according to 2018 data from the Road Ecology Center at the University of California, Davis. That’s nearly 20 crashes a day, at least. Manyare likely unreported.

And they aren’t cheap — for the drivers or the government. Between 2015 and 2018, wildlife crashes have cost more than $1 billion. The expenses include car damage, personal injuries, emergency response, traffic impacts, lost work and the clean-up. 

Highways aren’t just crash sites for the deer caught in the headlights; they’re also a great divide that can threaten the future of an entire species. 

That’s because highways cut through critical habitat, making it impossible for animals from one side to breed with animals on the other. This leads to inbreeding and deformities that result from dwindling genetic diversity. 

Wildlife Crossings Can Help

Utah saw a 98.5% reduction in deer mortalities when it built two animal underpasses on a stretch of highway that blocked traditional migratory routes. In Colorado, wildlife-vehicle collisions dropped by 89% after the state built two bridges to help mule deer and elk safely cross a highway. Arizona, Florida, Montana, Oregon, New Mexico, Washington and Wyoming have also built successful wildlife crossings.   

But California? Despite its environmentally-aware reputation, the Golden State lags in building these crossings. The Liberty Canyon overpass would be California’s first bridge on the state highway system designed specifically for fostering wildlife connectivity. And even with the new funding, it’s still years away from completion. 

“We’re not an environmental state,” said Fraser Shilling, co-director of the Road Ecology Center at UC Davis. “We don’t have environmental-based legislation that is resulting in protection of wildlife.”

This year, however, conservationists are encouraged by action at the state Capitol. A bill making its way through the Legislature would encourage the state transportation agency to build more wildlife crossings. 

And the budget lawmakers passed last month includes new funding to build animal overpasses and underpasses. In addition to the $7 million for the bridge at Liberty Canyon, it also includes $2 million to build a tunnel for deer and mountain lions to pass under Highway 17 in the Santa Cruz Mountains, plus $52.5 million for other wildlife crossings that have yet to be identified. 

Wildlife crossings have gained support across the political spectrum — both from environmentalists as well as groups that advocate for hunters. Even though he disagrees with California’s ban on hunting mountain lions, Dan Whisenhunt, chief executive officer at the California Deer Association, supports building more overpasses and underpasses.

“This is one time that politics is listening to common sense… because nobody loses in this,” Whisenhunt said. “It could be somebody from Los Angeles or San Francisco or out of state, traveling on Highway 395, and they’re going to have the benefit of that crossing because there’s not going to be the deer running across the road.” 

Near Lake Tahoe, for instance, three underpasses help mule deer safely wander below Highway 395. In Los Angeles County, the Harbor Boulevard Wildlife Underpass is a metal corrugated tunnel directing coyotes, deer and bobcats under the road. In Orange County, a corridor will provide a safe route for gray foxes, bobcats, coyotes and other creatures to travel between the Santa Ana Mountains and the coast. 

Underpasses are generally cheaper than overpasses, and some animals, such as deer, prefer them. 

Mountain lions, however, prefer overpasses. A desire to protect them from extinction has led to the years-long push to build the Liberty Canyon Wildlife Crossing. Expected to be complete in late 2025, it will be the largest wildlife passage in the world. 

Liberty Canyon Overpass Could Save Threatened Mountain Lions

Mountain lions in the Santa Ana and Santa Monica Mountains face a 99% chance of extinction within the next 50 years, and genetic isolation is to blame. 

“They’re inbreeding with each other, and they face this extinction vortex,” said Mari Galloway, the California program manager at Wildlands Network. “It’s shown in this kinked tail.” 

The kinked tail is a familiar omen. A few decades ago, fewer than 30 mountain lions remained in Florida. Isolated by highways, they were breeding in too small of circles. The proof was in the tail: When on the edge of extinction, the ends of the tails were bent out of shape. 

“What they need is genetic connectivity, and so Liberty Canyon will provide more opportunities for outside mountain lions to come in and really give that gene pool a boost and diversity,” said Tiffany Yap, senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity in San Francisco. “Not only is that crossing really key for mountain lions, but it would help an incredible amount of biodiversity in the area.” 

Connecting one side of the mountain range to the other, the crossing would provide a safe passageway for mountain lions as well as gopher snakes, mule deer, and desert cottontail rabbits. 

The project — expected to cost $87 million — is being funded with public and private dollars, including $250,000 from the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation and $25 million from the Annenberg Foundation. 

“We’re not just relying on the state,” said Beth Pratt, regional executive director at the National Wildlife Federation.

The investments not only buoy conservation efforts, but also make highways safer and financially self-sustaining. In Placerville, in the Sierra Nevada foothills, a tunnel under Highway 50 cost $1.3 million to build. 

“The project is pretty close to having paid for itself already by reducing collisions with deer,” said Shilling, the UC Davis ecologist. 

Enticing Road Builders to Plan for Wildlife

Money, however, isn’t the only problem. Even if consistent funding went to wildlife crossings, actually building them can get complicated. 

That’s because California’s transportation planners — under pressure to serve growing communities and alleviate traffic — haven’t had much incentive to build tunnels and bridges for animals. State Sen. Henry Stern wants to change that. 

“We’ve got all these big statewide goals around biodiversity and protecting natural lands and conserving open space,” the Malibu Democrat said. “But we thought we needed to do something… that really integrated wildlife connectivity and habitat connectivity into the transportation planning process.” 

Stern’s Senate Bill 790 creates an incentive system that allows Caltrans, the agency that builds roads and freeways, to get credits from the state if it retrofits highways with new wildlife crossings. 

In the future, when Caltrans builds transportation projects that may have adverse environmental impacts, the department can draw upon these mitigation credits from building wildlife crossings. The concept is similar to other environmental programs that encourage companies to offset some of their pollution by paying for ecological benefits. 

The bill passed the Senate with overwhelming bipartisan support and is now being considered in the Assembly. 

The bill would also grant mitigation credits to Caltrans when its projects protect species listed under the California Endangered Species Act. Since October 2020, some mountain lions in Southern California and the Central Coast have been granted temporary legal protection under the act, while the state Department of Fish and Wildlife reviews whether they should be listed as threatened.

That means if Stern’s bill becomes law, projects such as Liberty Canyon could receive a boost because Caltrans could receive mitigation credits for building a crossing that helps mountain lions. 

This issue also represents an opportunity for Newsom to advance his family legacy of mountain lion conservation. More than 30 years ago, his father William Newsom championed the ballot measure that banned hunting the species in California. The governor remembers licking envelopes to help promote his father’s hunting ban, he told the Sacramento Bee last year. 

Stern talked with Newsom about his connection to mountain lions when they toured the site for the Liberty Canyon Wildlife Crossing almost two years ago. 

“This is how he and a lot of other people connect to nature,” Stern said. “He was out there with his dad helping get the original mountain lion ballot initiative passed… and he wanted to run around in the wilderness with me… and you could tell, it woke up the kid in him.”

CalMatters is a public interest journalism venture committed to explaining how California’s Capitol works and why it matters.

San Diego County has averaged one fatal DUI crash per week over the last five months even though there are fewer drivers on the road due to the COVID-19 pandemic, putting the county on target to exceed its worst year for such fatalities, the San Diego County District Attorney’s Office said Thursday.

Though non-injury DUI cases are down more than 30%, fatal crashes are up 33% with 24 deaths so far this year, compared to 18 at the same time last year, according to the DA’s Office. Blood-alcohol levels are also higher than last year’s average.

This year’s trend is expected to surpass the county’s worst year for fatal DUI crashes — 2017, when 25 people were killed.

As part of local efforts to combat serious DUI offenses and prosecute such cases, the District Attorney’s Office has received a $426,000 grant from the California Office of Traffic Safety.

The DA’s Office says the grant will support its DUI Homicide Unit in its prosecutions and investigations. Funding will also go toward providing training for prosecutors and investigators through California’s Traffic Safety Resource Prosecutor Program, and hosting quarterly regional meetings with law enforcement partners to improve DUI investigations and prosecutions.

“This grant will allow our DUI Homicide Unit to continue its critical public safety work,” San Diego County District Attorney Summer Stephan said. “Even with stay-at-home orders because of the pandemic and many bars being closed, we are still on the brink of topping the highest number of deadly DUI crashes we have had in a single year.

“Today’s drivers know the risks and the dangers of driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs, yet they persist,” she said. “Prosecuting and investigating these important cases require a specialized team of prosecutors and investigators to be able to hold offenders accountable and deter this deadly behavior.”

–City News Service