Overturned big rig pins Mercedes on 210 Freeway, injuring three

Two semi-trucks collided on the westbound 210 Freeway just east of Pennsylvania Avenue in La Crescenta on the morning of Aug. 19, and one of them overturned onto a Mercedes sedan and pinned the car beneath its trailer. Three people were hurt and taken to hospitals, the California Highway Patrol said.

The wreck was reported shortly before 11 a.m. One of the rigs caught fire, and cargo from the trailer spilled across several lanes; the Highway Patrol has not said what it was carrying. Los Angeles County fire crews and Highway Patrol officers worked the scene while recovery teams moved to lift the trailer off the pinned Mercedes.

A SigAlert closed all westbound lanes, and they did not reopen until about 1 a.m. the next day. To keep some vehicles moving, Highway Patrol officers routed traffic through the center median and then onto State Route 2. Less than two hours earlier, a separate big rig had caught fire on the westbound 210 near Sunland Boulevard, its flames spreading into about half an acre of hillside brush and prompting the morning's first SigAlert.

A deadlier crash on the same route

The same freeway was the site of a fatal crash two months earlier, about 20 miles east. On June 20, a 2016 Freightliner Cascadia heading eastbound on the 210 near Irwindale Avenue made a sudden turn into the median, burst through the center divider and jackknifed across the oncoming westbound lanes, the Highway Patrol said. One woman was killed and 32 other motorists were injured.

The woman who died was Christina King, 58, who was driving a 2015 Ford Transit westbound in the carpool lane. A 2018 Ford Transit directly behind her was also unable to avoid the wreck and hit the trailer, and a 2024 Honda Prologue in the number two lane struck debris. Two passengers in King's van suffered major injuries. Ten people were taken to hospitals, two of them critically, and six of the eight with minor injuries were children, the Los Angeles County Fire Department said.

A 2015 Ford Transit traveling westbound in the HOV lane was unable to avoid the Freightliner and collided with the front right portion of the semi-truck.

Dashcam video captured the truck veering onto the right shoulder before it crossed the divider and struck several vehicles within seconds. The crash blocked all westbound lanes and three eastbound lanes for hours near Irwindale, and the freeway did not fully reopen until just after 3 p.m. that day. Investigators said drugs and alcohol were not suspected, and the cause remains under investigation.

The weight behind the danger

Federal law caps a tractor-trailer at 80,000 pounds on the interstate system, and a rig at that weight needs far more room to stop than a passenger car. Loaded rigs require 20 to 40 percent more stopping distance than cars, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, and that gap widens on wet or slippery roads and with poorly maintained brakes. When one crosses into oncoming traffic, drivers have little time to react.

Trucking companies are required to make sure their drivers follow federal safety rules, and a company that loaded a truck can share liability if shifting cargo contributed to a driver losing control. Those questions often shape the investigations that follow a jackknife or a rollover, alongside the driver's actions and the condition of the truck.

Crashes involving big rigs have piled up on California highways through the summer, from the mountain passes of the north to the interstates east of Los Angeles. The dates, locations and toll of several recent wrecks show how widely the incidents have spread and how routinely they close major routes for hours at a time.

Each of those crashes forced long closures and, in most cases, hazardous-material cleanup. Diesel and oil spills, scattered freight and overturned trailers can turn a single collision into hours of blocked lanes on roads that carry tens of thousands of vehicles a day. Recovery of a rig that has gone down an embankment can take longer still, as crews work to reach and haul out a truck resting well below the roadway.

Wrecks from the Sierra to the desert

On westbound Interstate 80 near Blue Canyon in Placer County, a July 20 crash involving two big rigs and about 10 other vehicles sent one truck off the road and down an embankment, the Highway Patrol said. Seven people were taken to hospitals, two of them with moderate to major injuries. The wreck was reported just before 2 p.m. near the Drum Forebay Road off-ramp, and a diesel leak the Highway Patrol called significant added to a shutdown that ran about 16 hours.

In the Cajon Pass, a three-vehicle crash on northbound Interstate 15 near State Route 138 sent a semi off the roadway and down an embankment, where it came to rest upright with both dump-style trailers still attached. The collision, reported around 1:51 a.m. on Aug. 5, injured at least two people, one of them a girl who was taken to a hospital. The Highway Patrol logged only minor damage to the big rig, and debris was scattered across all the northbound lanes.

A deadlier wreck struck Interstate 10 in Thousand Palms on April 14, where a big rig crossed the center divider west of the Washington Street exit and hit a ready-mix concrete mixer head-on at about 7:50 a.m. The mixer's driver, George Mauricio, 62, of Yucca Valley, was pronounced dead at the scene and was identified by the Riverside County coroner. The Highway Patrol later revised the number of vehicles involved from six to eight, and debris still lined nearby Varner Road hours afterward.

Other collisions caused fewer injuries but similar disruption. A Ford Bronco, a BMW and a semi collided on southbound Interstate 15 in Escondido before 3 a.m. on June 26, overturning the Bronco and spilling an estimated 20 gallons of oil onto the freeway. In Sylmar, an Audi SUV ran into the rear of a big rig that a witness said was parked on the shoulder of the northbound 5 on Aug. 17, and its driver was hospitalized in critical condition.

A patrol truck caught in the impact

A Highway Patrol officer was airlifted to a Modesto-area hospital after a tractor-trailer struck his marked patrol pickup on State Route 59 about half a mile north of Turlock Road, north of Merced, on the morning of Aug. 5. The officer, who has served more than 24 years, had slowed to make a U-turn when the northbound truck hit the passenger side of his pickup and forced it off the road.

His door was jammed and firefighters had to cut him free before he could be flown out, though the Highway Patrol said he was not pinned inside. His injuries were described as serious but not life-threatening. The truck driver was not hurt and stayed at the scene. Investigators said alcohol and drugs were not suspected, and the highway stayed closed at Turlock Road into the afternoon.

A corridor that keeps shutting down

The 210 links the warehouses of the Inland Empire to the San Fernando Valley, funneling heavy freight along the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains on a route shared with morning commuters. The Aug. 19 collision closed it at La Crescenta; the June crash that killed King happened about 20 miles east, near Irwindale. When a rig fails on either stretch, the closures ripple onto surface streets and neighboring freeways for hours.

What investigators are examining

The Highway Patrol has not identified a cause for the La Crescenta collision, and several of the summer's crashes remain open cases. In the fatal Irwindale wreck, investigators traced the chain of events to a single unsafe turn into the median. After the Thousand Palms crash, local truck drivers spoke about the dangers of fatigue and the importance of rest and awareness behind the wheel, concerns that run through much of the industry.

Cleanup at the La Crescenta scene ran into the night. Spilled cargo had to be cleared from the lanes, the burned rig hauled away and the pinned Mercedes extracted before the freeway could reopen. Aerial footage over the scene showed the toppled trailer lying across the westbound side.

The three people hurt in the La Crescenta crash were taken to local hospitals in conditions that were not released. Their names have not been made public.

Freight crashes carry costs beyond the closures they cause. In the Blue Canyon and Escondido wrecks, spilled diesel and oil forced Caltrans and environmental crews to scrub the roadway before lanes could reopen, adding hours to each incident and keeping traffic diverted well past the initial impact.

Anyone with information about the Irwindale crash was asked to contact Highway Patrol Officer Rodriguez at (626) 517-8500, and the agency's Central Division accident investigation team is handling the Snelling case. Each remains under review as the Highway Patrol works to determine what caused the trucks to leave their lanes or lose control at highway speed.

A summer of freight collisions

Between April and August, big rigs crossed center dividers, tumbled down embankments and overturned onto cars from the Sierra foothills to the deserts east of Los Angeles, killing at least two people and injuring dozens more. The La Crescenta crash added three more to that toll, on a stretch of the 210 that keeps drawing emergency crews back to the same mountain corridor.