Traffic Accidents

While traffic officials applaud a new law that makes it illegal for drivers to read, write or send text messages, they admit there is little evidence that last year's ban against talking on a hand-held cellphone has actually prevented accidents. Since holding a phone to your ear was made a traffic violation last July, the California Highway Patrol has written about 48,000 tickets, fining drivers from $20 to $50.

The road is scarred with skid marks, some curved like snakes, others pencil straight. They shriek the fates of unlucky travelers who lost their lives; they mark the near-misses. It's not just the treacherous potholes, or the edges of the road nibbled away like cookies. It's not the dozing driver behind the glaring truck headlights about to veer onto the wrong side. People here in central Zimbabwe are afraid of something else.

He was a former lawman who called himself "Mask" and advocated a hold-nothing-back lifestyle that helped transform mixed martial arts fighting into a craze and turned his own fighting apparel company into a multimillion-dollar business.

That damned car wreck. Every time I walk toward the front gates at Angel Stadium, past the somber memorial circled with Angels baseball caps, I get angry, and that's what I think. Why did it have to happen? Why did three young friends, so full of life, have to face such a terrible end? We know a lot now about Nick Adenhart, the talented Angel who died on April 9, hit by an allegedly drunk fool of a driver hours after pitching a great game.

A runaway truck carrying hazardous materials crashed into 11 other vehicles on Interstate 5 north of Tejon Pass on Wednesday, injuring 11 people and closing all northbound lanes for almost three hours, the California Highway Patrol said. The accident happened in thick fog shortly before 1 p.m. on the long grade that descends from the mountains into the southern San Joaquin Valley.

Cal State Northridge guard Josh Jenkins remained hospitalized in stable condition Monday after being injured in a single-car accident Saturday in which the driver was killed, the school announced. Jenkins, the team's point guard, is out of action indefinitely but could be released from the hospital soon, school spokesman Bob Vazquez said. California Hospital Medical Center spokeswoman Katreena Salgado said she did not have further information on Jenkins' injuries.

Five people were killed Tuesday morning when a sport utility vehicle skidded off Interstate 5, rolled down an embankment and burst into flames, authorities said. Witnesses to the Mission Viejo crash said they ran down the embankment to try to help, but the blaze forced them back. The Orange County coroner's office said the victims were a 37-year-old man, a 33-year-old woman and three other females whose ages were not released. The accident happened about 10:25 a.m.

The California Highway Patrol has recommended that prosecutors consider manslaughter charges against a La Habra police officer who was responding to an emergency in April when she sped through a red light and broadsided a car, killing a husband and wife, authorities said Wednesday. The case was presented to the Orange County district attorney's office Wednesday by the California Highway Patrol's Multidisciplinary Accident Investigation team, which recommended filing the charges against La Habra Police Officer Nancy Garcia.

Late nearly every night, Vicki Kipper says, she hears the roar of drivers racing outside her Highland Avenue home, occasionally punctuated by the crunch of a speeding car tearing the side mirror off a parked car. "You hear them before you see them," said Kipper, who has lived on Highland for 26 years. "We also hear cars getting hit all the time out here."

Two men were killed early Saturday after one of them drove the wrong way on the 57 Freeway in Diamond Bar, colliding with the other driver in a minivan, California Highway Patrol officers reported. The fiery predawn collision occurred north of the 60 Freeway, officers said in a report. The three-car accident occurred about 4:15 a.m. when Jesse Fierro, 27, of Montebello drove his Ford F-150 truck south in the northbound lanes of the 57.