Site of I-15 chain crash notorious for backups
A commuter bus slammed into backed-up traffic Wednesday morning in Temecula on a stretch of highway notorious for congestion and a high rate of accidents.
The five-vehicle, chain reaction crash on southbound Interstate 15 sent seven people to local hospitals, including the driver of the Riverside Transit Agency bus, whose right leg was almost completely severed, California Highway Patrol Officer Nathan Baer said.
About 7:50 a.m., the bus carrying five passengers rammed into the back of a white box truck that was stopped at the end of a line of cars waiting to exit the freeway at Winchester Road. The bus driver, whose injuries were potentially life-threatening, apparently didn’t notice that the vehicles in front of him were stopped, Baer said.
Throughout each day, traffic backs up onto the southbound freeway from the heavily used Winchester Road off-ramp, leaving drivers to idle precariously in the right-hand lane. A $200-million road project aimed at alleviating the congestion has been in the works for 12 years.
Temecula and the rest of southwest Riverside County have grown exponentially over the past 20 years, and traffic on its freeways and interchanges have, too. The Winchester Road interchange, a gateway to The Promenade mall and the rest of Temecula’s retail core, is one of the busiest.
The southbound freeway around Winchester Road had a rate of collisions more than 50 percent higher than the state average, according to a 2009 study done by Temecula and Caltrans in preparation for the project. The study looked at crashes from 2002 to 2004.
Most of the accidents occurred during weekdays in good driving conditions, and most were rear-end collisions, the study found.
Rush-hour mess
The bus that authorities said started the crash was traveling on RTA Route 208, an express commuter line heading from downtown Riverside to the mall. The route is operated for RTA by an outside contractor, Empire Transportation of Bellflower. The driver, whose identity was not released, is an employee of that company.
An Empire representative declined to comment on the crash, referring questions to RTA.
Passengers estimated the bus was going about 55 mph when it crashed, though CHP officers couldn’t immediately confirm that.
Baer said officers continue to investigate but there was no indication drugs or alcohol played a role. RTA officials said in a statement they were working with the CHP to review camera footage taken from the bus.
The impact from the bus forced the box truck into a Nissan pickup and off the side of the road. The pickup was sent forward into an SUV, which hit another SUV in front of it.
The driver of the box truck walked away from the crash without significant injuries, despite his truck ending up on its side.
The bus careened off the box truck, across four lanes of traffic into the concrete center divider. The front of the red-and-white bus was shorn off.
All five bus passengers were taken to local hospitals with minor to moderate injuries, Baer said. The driver of the pickup, which was totaled, was treated at a hospital with cuts to his face.
The crash and resulting cleanup reduced the freeway to two lanes for several hours, causing a massive traffic headache for morning commuters. Southbound traffic backed up for miles, as far north as Lake Elsinore on I-15 and into Menifee on Interstate 215, according to drivers and the CHP.
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