Traffic Accidents

Traffic accidents in the Ukraine claimed more than 7,000 lives in 1984 and at least a quarter of them were caused by drunk drivers, the newspaper Pravda said. The fatality statistics, rarely made public in the Soviet Union, were released last week in Kiev by Deputy Interior Minister V. Pitsyur. They coincide with the tightening of discipline ordered by Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

New Year's holiday traffic accidents claimed the lives of five people, including two pedestrians, in Los Angeles and Orange counties as police made hundreds of arrests in a crackdown on drunk driving, officials said Saturday. The California Highway Patrol reported 20 people had been killed throughout the state in traffic accidents from 6 p.m. New Year's Eve until 6 a.m. Saturday, down considerably from last year's toll.

At least 52 people died in traffic accidents during the Thanksgiving weekend in California, with a predictable surge in traffic expected as motorists head home to end the holiday. The California Highway Patrol reported 52 people killed on the state's highways between 6 p.m. Wednesday, the start of the holiday reporting period, and 6 a.m. Sunday. The next update will be this morning, the CHP said.

Two men were killed Sunday in separate early-morning traffic accidents in north Orange County, authorities said. In Fullerton, a pedestrian, Cupertino Reyes, 59, was struck and killed by a car about 1 a.m. as he was trying to cross the 400 block of South Harbor Boulevard, Fullerton police reported. Reyes was pronounced dead at the scene. Officers reported that the driver was a 17-year-old girl from Fullerton who was not identified because she is a juvenile. She was not arrested or cited.

At least four people were killed Sunday in three traffic accidents around the Southland. None of the victims' names was released, and no arrests had been made. In La Habra, a 33-year-old man driving a Nissan pickup truck and a female juvenile in a Chevrolet SUV were killed when their vehicles collided, authorities said. The juvenile was ejected from the SUV. Three other occupants of that vehicle and a passenger in the pickup were seriously injured. The accident, reported at 1:16 p.m.

Holiday traffic had claimed at least 28 lives in California by late Sunday, including four people in a pickup truck killed near Fresno when the allegedly drunk driver ran a stop sign and was hit by an oncoming car, authorities said. The truck driver, Humberto Beltran, 34, survived the 1 a.m.

Nine people were killed, among them a 7-year-old girl, and 14 were injured in a rash of weekend traffic accidents across Southern California, authorities said. Two of the injured were hurled from a car that police believe was drag-racing in Sylmar, on the same stretch of road where police say a drag-racer killed a woman and seriously injured her children last month. Half an hour later, at about 3:15 a.m.

Three people died early Sunday of injuries suffered in separate traffic accidents. The first accident happened at 11:18 p.m. Saturday in Buena Park when a teen-ager ran across Beach Boulevard near Knott's Berry Farm and was struck by a car traveling north, Buena Park police said. The victim, an Upland boy whose name was not released pending notification of relatives, was pronounced dead at 12:02 a.m. Sunday at West Humana Hospital in Anaheim. Police say he was 15 or 16.

Five people died Wednesday in four traffic accidents within about 90 minutes on Orange County highways, including a man struck twice after he tried to secure a Christmas tree on his car hood, authorities said. Clark R. Danielson, 24, of Lake Elsinore was hit by a truck, then a car, when he stopped in the far right lane of Interstate 5 in San Juan Capistrano to tie down a Christmas tree atop his car at about 2 a.m. He died at 11 a.m. Wednesday at Mission Community Hospital in Mission Viejo.