A head-on crash early Sunday morning on a mountainous, rural East County roadway left one driver dead and the other badly injured, authorities said.<\/p>\n
The collision occurred about 12:35 a.m. on La Cresta Road near the community of Crest, San Miguel Fire & Rescue Battalion Chief Justin Fuller said. He said speed was a factor in the crash, and that distraction and impairment may have also factored into the deadly wreck.<\/p>\n
The California Highway Patrol was handling the investigation and would determine its exact cause, Fuller said.<\/p>\n
A white Chevrolet pickup was heading downhill and a red Honda sedan was travelling uphill when the two vehicles collided, Fuller said. The Honda\u2019s driver, a man, was trapped inside his vehicle and died before he could be taken to a hospital.<\/p>\n
His name and other details about his identity were not immediately available.<\/p>\n
The other driver, also a man, had freed himself from his damaged pickup and was lying on the side of the roadway by the time fire crews arrived, Fuller said. He was taken to a hospital with \u201cmajor traumatic injuries,\u201d according to the battalion chief.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat area, we have a lot of horrible accidents,\u201d Fuller said, noting the two-lane nature of La Cresta Road on that stretch, and its many blind turns. He urged drivers to slow down, especially at night, and avoid distractions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A head-on crash early Sunday morning on a mountainous, rural East County roadway left one driver dead and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":455652,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[7,138,3053,181,23,100,74,84,76,75],"class_list":["post-455651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-california","tag-crime-and-public-safety","tag-east-county","tag-latest-headlines","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-county","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/455651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=455651"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/455651\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/455652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=455651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=455651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=455651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}