Drunk driver causes three-car accident

Alcohol was involved in a severe automobile crash early Sunday morning that left one woman with life-threatening injuries.

The accident occurred shortly after 3 a.m. on Sunday and was caused by Leslie A. Zumalt, a 31-year-old Raytown woman who was driving while intoxicated westbound on U.S. 50 in the eastbound lanes, according to police. Zumalt's 2005 Chevrolet Cobalt first hit head-on a 2002 Jeep Grand Cherokee driven by 21-year-old William L. Reifeiss, of Lee's Summit, at eastbound U.S. 50 and Third Street. The collision was not directly head-to-head, which caused the Cobalt to spin and hit a 2000 Chevy Impala driven by Tyler J. Hand, a 28-year-old Raytown man, whose passenger was 18-year-old Lisa M. Michaels of Kansas City.

Reifeiss and Hand also were allegedly intoxicated at the time of the crash and were arrested for operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated, according to police.

Zumalt suffered life-threatening injuries in the crash. Mike Childs, public information supervisor for the Lee's Summit Police Department, said Zumalt was in critical condition and in a medically induced coma as of Tuesday.

Michaels suffered serious, but not life-threatening, facial lacerations in the crash. Reifeiss and Hand were uninjured in the crash. Childs said Reifeiss probably escaped injury because the collision was not directly head-on.

Childs said it is unclear at this point where Zumalt first began traveling westbound in eastbound lanes, but added he thinks Zumalt began driving the wrong way on the highway before entering Lee's Summit city limits. Childs said that estimation comes from the fact that there was very little time between the first call to the police reporting a wrong-way driver and the calls reporting the head-on collision.

Childs said while it's not rare for police to receive calls about a wrong-way driver on U.S. 50, the number of serious accidents caused by wrong-way drivers are surprisingly minimal.

"Do we get a lot of calls about people driving the wrong way on the highway? Sure, we do," Childs said. "But we could go years before having something like (Sunday's accident) occur again."

Childs said many instances of wrong-way drivers on U.S. 50 are caused by honest mistakes of the drivers, who may be "confused by the outer road system."

By Brett Dalton
The Journal Staff

Posted: Tuesday, January 8, 2008 7:19 PM CST

source http://www.lsjournal.com


Dont get me started on drunk drivers I would be hear all night who here has turned onto the wrong way of a oneway road

Bus crash kills 14 in China

A bus has plunged into a ravine in the mountainous south-west Chinese province of Yunnan, killing 14 people, Xinhua news agency reports.

The bus, with 20 people on board, veered off a highway in Maguan county on Wednesday afternoon. Six were injured.

"Fourteen people died at the scene. The injured have been rushed to a nearby hospital and are reportedly out of danger," Xinhua said.

China's roads are the deadliest in the world, with overtaking on blind mountain corners common. Road accidents kill about 100,000 people a year.

Source http://www.abc.net.au- Reuters

Fog Causes 70-Car Pileup in Fla 4 Dead

LAKELAND, Fla. (AP) — About 70 vehicles crashed on an interstate blanketed by fog and smoke from a brush fire early Wednesday, killing four people, authorities said.

Nearly 15 miles of Interstate 4 between Tampa and Orlando was closed by several crashes, including the pileup. Aerial footage in the early morning showed the soupy mix of fog and smoke covering the landscape for miles and giving the sky an eerie golden color.

The poor visibility forced rescuers to walk along the closed interstate checking individual vehicles for injured motorists, Florida Highway Patrol Trooper Larry Coggins said. The conditions cleared in late morning, showing mangled, charred trucks and cars pinned underneath some tractor-trailers.

Workers were still trying to rescue one man pinned beneath an overturned truck. There is no estimate on when I-4, the main east-west artery for central Florida, will reopen.

Coggins said 38 people were injured, five seriously.

Tractor-trailers overturned on the roadway, including a tanker. At least six of them burned completely.

"Everything came to a halt," Robert Ellison, who was driving east on the highway about 6 a.m., told The Tampa Tribune and WFLA-TV. "You can't see your hand in front of your face."

One of the first people involved in the accident was a sheriff's deputy, Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said. The deputy told Judd that conditions on the road worsened suddenly. "'It was clear, it was a little foggy, then it was total darkness,'" Judd recounted the deputy saying.

The sheriff said the deputy was shaken up but helped move people to safety as vehicles continued to crash — the sounds of metal grinding and gnashing in the darkness.

The Florida Highway Patrol is investigating the crash and the role of smoke from the fire, which started as a controlled burn and grew out of control.

The fog was a contributing factor to the crashes, Coggins said, but he downplayed the smoke as a cause, saying deputies who were patrolling the area earlier Wednesday morning reported smoke was not an issue.

Since Tuesday, the brush fire has charred 400 acres. It is burning roughly half a mile from the highway and is 90 percent contained, Division of Forestry spokeswoman Chris Kintner said.
Forestry workers notified the highway patrol that smoke from the blaze could mix with fog, she said. Warnings signs were also placed on the interstate, but Kintner said she didn't know whether the signs were lit.


Source:The Associated Press