Really Bad Car Accident Caught On Camera

[Killhippie]

Seeing that made my blood run cold, not only for the innocent deaths but that the women obviously didnt get the mental health care she needed, and taking a urban missile away from here would have been my first thought (used to do counselling many years back, did psychology at uni over here in the UK and passed with a first) People get up say bye to loved ones, then it all goes to hell and so much pain is to come as people grieve. RIP to those that passed including the driver, this world is a scary place.

 

[sebastiantombs]

The driver wasn't killed in the crash and sits in jail.

She was a nurse. I would expect a nurse, medical professional, to recognize that when was having problems, mentally, and to seek proper assistance/treatment. When I was a teenager I had a very difficult period in my life but had the simple common sense to seek help, in my case a Catholic priest and I'm not even a Catholic. A few discussions with him got me back to, what for me is, normal. She should have know, in other words, that she needed help. No excuse for that in my mind. Her family knew she was having problems, although they seem to minimize those problems, but still given her occupation in the medical field they should have encouraged her to seek help.

 

[wtimothyholman]

Family of the driver created a web site about her and saying she has mental illness

The web site at nicolelintonstory.com is worth perusing. The gist of it is that she has had at least four other episodes where she went manic or "zoned out", and that the accident was one of those episodes. The family is trying to get her bailed out of jail so they can get her diagnosed with a form of epilepsy, essentially removing all criminal liability from her actions.

It's a well-crafted attempt to sway public opinion in her favor, although I doubt it will have any effect on the criminal proceedings. It remains to be seen if the DA has evidence that leads him to believe that she is criminally liable, or if it is just grandstanding on his part.

Her story also makes it clear that she received a great deal of mental health counseling and medical support, but that her "episodes" were so infrequent that even her relatives weren't really concerned about her.

 

[Killhippie]

The driver wasn't killed in the crash and sits in jail.

She was a nurse. I would expect a nurse, medical professional, to recognize that when was having problems, mentally, and to seek proper assistance/treatment. When I was a teenager I had a very difficult period in my life but had the simple common sense to seek help, in my case a Catholic priest and I'm not even a Catholic. A few discussions with him got me back to, what for me is, normal. She should have know, in other words, that she needed help. No excuse for that in my mind. Her family knew she was having problems, although they seem to minimize those problems, but still given her occupation in the medical field they should have encouraged her to seek help.

With that extra information yes she should have known, but Getting people to realise they have a problem and getting people to get treatment are very different you had a good sense to seek help for yourself, I had a nervous breakdown and saw a counsellor which got me through after a very bad divorce break up, I’m disabled so I can’t drive a car but if I had been able to I wouldn’t of got behind the wheel at a time because common sense would dictate I knew I wasn’t safe to drive sadly we’re not all like that and it’s not always the fault of the person sometimes people think they’re okay people think that they’re gonna be able to get by it doesn’t workout.

 

[The Automation Guy]

I am heartbroken for the families that lost people or had people injured in this crash. I don't want to minimize the extreme harm that this woman caused in the matter of seconds.

That being said, this is going to be an interesting case to follow.....

The family says she has had manic events in the past, but are very careful to say that they never were severe enough for them to be concerned about her well being or the well being of others (thereby trying to cover their own butts). It's like they are building and destroying their case all at the same time. While I don't think that "anyone in their right mind" would drive a car towards an intersection at over 100mph, I am surprised at the actions of people on a daily basis. What I consider to be crazy and unacceptable behavior, other people clearly consider normal..... Whether or not the woman can mount a viable "mental health" defense in this case will be interesting to follow. It will also be interesting to see if the remarks made by the family end up helping or harming her case in the long run.

 

[BeexyEna]

If this girl had mental health problems and her family knew about it, why didn't they get her into treatment? This girl committed a crime, and I believe she should be in jail. My sister was hit by a car three years ago and miraculously survived. The driver who hit my sister tried to justify himself. If I had not consulted with the car accident lawyer, we would not have been able to get justice. It took my sister 2 years to recover, and she is still afraid of passing cars. Although our lawyer did everything possible to get the guilty party punished, my sister's life was ruined. Who is responsible for this?

 

[The Automation Guy]

I'm not in California, so I haven't seen any coverage of this since the initial events. However I did a quick search when this popped back up in my feed and found out that....

• there is no evidence of drugs or alcohol being involved
• the California Highway Patrol states that this lady had at least 13 previous automobile accidents - one in 2020 that was severe enough to total two cars.
• she has been charged with 6 counts of murder and 5 counts of vehicular manslaughter

 

[redpoint5]

My wife worked with a young woman that had been in many accidents. The last one she told me about, the woman turned left in front of oncoming traffic because she had a yellow flashing light. "I can turn on a yellow" the girl said.

She's the reason why we can't have all left turns be a yellow light, because morons think that means everyone else needs to get out of their way.

 

[TonyR]

She's the reason why we can't have all left turns be a yellow light, because morons think that means everyone else needs to get out of their way.

Then you can imagine the number of times I witnessed this in my 31 years of traffic signal maintenance:

If the signals were dark in the direction they were traveling, either because the power was out or JUST THE RED signal indications were out in their particular direction of travel , they'd breeze right on through because their thinking was "..well, if it's not red, it must be green" or only God know what...if they were even thinking at all.

If they were lucky or blessed, they'd make it...if not....well, you know the answer to that. Many of our signalized intersections were on expressways with posted speeds of 55, were 85 feet across 6 lanes and handled over 45,000 cars per day.

Not an ideal scenario for the motorist when they malfunctioned or were dark....or for a field tech on the corner with his head the cabinet trying to fix the issue. I've almost been collateral damage several times in my career, both while on the ground and in a bucket truck.

BTW, traffic signals can be placed into "flash mode" either manually by the police or by the automatic activation of the conflict monitor when either conflicting signal indications are detected or missing. The signals are generally hardwired to flash either red in all directions =OR= flash yellow for the major arterial directions and red for the minor cross street. We changed it early on in my career to flash red in ALL directions because people on the cross street would stop on the flashing red then drive on and collide with someone on the arterial that had a flashing yellow and was not required to stop but was supposed to proceed with caution. The cross street motorist assumed that the arterial had a flashing red like he did and well....you know what happens when we assume anything. Going to flashing red in ALL directions helped the collision problem a lot but didn't cure it entirely because there are far too many morons out there behind the wheel with a valid drivers license.