Traffic Accidents California

An early-morning crash on the San Diego Freeway killed an 18-year-old Huntington Beach woman not wearing a safety belt, an incident that law enforcement said underscores a persistent problem: Many back-seat passengers don't bother to buckle up.

Defying predictions that higher speed limits would mean more carnage, the number of deaths on California's highways dropped in 1997 to the lowest level in 38 years, state officials reported Monday. The California Highway Patrol reported that 3,671 people died on streets, highways and freeways last year, a drop of almost 2,000 from the all-time high of 5,503 in 1979.

A van packed with 28 people thought to be undocumented immigrants flipped in a drainage ditch Friday in the Imperial County town of Holtville, leaving one man in a coma and the other occupants with minor injuries, officials said. U.S. Border Patrol agents trailing the van used CPR to revive three people found submerged in knee-deep water after the van crashed off a dirt road, said Bill Strassberger, a spokesman for the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Nick LeBlanc rues his reckless youth. Back when he was 16, he bought an old Chevy pickup and took a girl he liked out for a ride down a country road on a summer night. Just as he reached over to turn down the radio, he hit a telephone pole. The girl bounced braces-first off the dashboard and into the windshield. She split her lower lip. "After that night, she didn't want nothing to do with me," he says. The patrolman who had been tailing his speeding vehicle wasn't very forgiving either.

An investigation was continuing Sunday into an accident that left five people dead and nine injured when a tractor-trailer struck a van on Interstate 10 near Blythe late Friday night. California Highway Patrol Sgt. Mike Kingston said it did not appear that drugs or alcohol played a role in the crash. Thirteen people, related by marriage, were in the 15-passenger van heading to Mexico. The accident happened 12 miles west of Blythe at 11:55 p.m.

Relatives said that 10 farm workers who were killed when their van crashed into a truck-trailer rig were originally from the city of Sensunte in El Salvador. The dead farm workers, along with a 1-year-old who was killed Sunday, were reportedly traveling to Fresno to do Christmas shopping and planned to return to El Salvador for the holiday. On Monday, the coroner's office released the victims' names and ages, where available.

A mother and son who were seriously injured in a highway crash near Lompoc that left 11 dead were reunited Monday for the first time since the accident Sept. 9. A teary-eyed Rosa Hernandez, 41, and her son, Martin Camacho, 16, shared affectionate looks and caresses at the Grossman Burn Center at Sherman Oaks Hospital.

A mother and son who were seriously injured in a highway crash near Lompoc that left 11 dead were reunited Monday for the first time since the accident Sept. 9. A teary-eyed Rosa Hernandez, 41, and her son, Martin Camacho, 16, shared affectionate looks and caresses at the Grossman Burn Center at Sherman Oaks Hospital.

In the dusty little village of 900 people known as Rancheria Hernandez, families live in garage-sized adobe homes with corrugated metal roofs kept in place by large rocks or logs. The floors are packed dirt. There are no bathrooms. And the stench of animal waste is everywhere. At least drinking water reaches some homes through pipes now, so most campesinos no longer must rely on the same watering holes used by their dogs, cattle and sheep.

Relatives of a woman who survived a fiery highway crash that killed 11 people near Lompoc last week asked for help Tuesday in raising money to return the bodies of eight relatives and friends to their Mexican hometowns. Family and friends so far have raised a little more than half of the estimated $12,700 needed to transport the bodies back to their villages in the state of Puebla, relatives said.