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A blown tire caused a fatal SUV rollover crash on I-5. (Photo: YouTube) Click photo to view full-size

A blown tire caused a fatal SUV rollover crash on I-5. (Photo: YouTube) Click photo to view full-size

A 61-year-old woman was killed and two others suffered major injuries Friday morning when a  blown tire caused an SUV rollover crash on Interstate 5 in Bakersfield.

•   The right rear wheel of a Chevy Suburban had a flat tire and started to wobble at freeway speed on Interstate 5.

•   The SUV went out of control and rolled over several times, killing one of the occupants.

•   Five others — including two teens and a 10-year-old — were hospitalized. Only one passenger, a 5-year-old boy,  escaped injury.

The fatal freeway crash occurred at about 6:30 a.m., according to a KBAK News report.

California Highway Patrol officer Kelly Olsen said 63-year-old Juvento Magana of Baldwin Park was driving a white 2006 Chevrolet Suburban SUV north on Interstate 5 in the fast lane when the accident occurred. There were six passengers in the van.

Just after the SUV passed the Panama Lane exit, a mechanical failure caused the right rear wheel to wobble and the tire blew out, Olsen said. Magana was unable to control the wobbling and the vehicle went out of control.

The SUV veered into the center median and then overturned and rolled over several times, Olsen said. The CHP does not know how many times the SUV rolled.

The Kern County coroner’s office confirmed that one of the passengers, 61-year-old Maria Este Montejano De Magana of Baldwin Park, died at the scene.

The driver and a 38-year-old woman, whose name was not released, were among five victims who suffered minor to major injuries and were taken to area hospitals to be treated, according to a report in the Fresno Bee. The other three were girls aged 19, 17 and 10. The seventh occupant, a 5-year-old boy, was not injured.

All of the occupants in the SUV were properly fastened into seat belts, Olsen said.

Here are more photos of the accident. Click on a thumbnail to see it full-size.

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Bakersfield SUV Rollover Crash Lawyers

The trial attorneys at Blackman Legal Group, a California-based law firm founded by renowned trial attorney Clifford Blackman, have successfully represented SUV rollover crash victims and their families for 35 years. The nationwide toll-free number to call for a free consultation is 1-866-692-8126.

A human driver caused a fender-bender in Google's self-driving Prius. (Photo: Jalopnik) CLick photo to view larger.

A human driver caused a fender-bender in Google’s self-driving Prius. (Photo: Jalopnik) Click photo to view larger.

Google’s perfect test record with it’s self-driving car was wrecked earlier this week when the driverless Prius caused a fender-bender not far from the Internet company’s Mountain View headquarters. There’s a good excuse, though. A human was behind the wheel.

•   Google’s self-driving cars have been road-tested without any accidents for more than 160,000 miles in California.

•   Last week one of the cars, a Prius, rear-ended a human-driven Prius near company headquarters. There were no injuries.

•   Google issued a statement saying an engineer was behind the wheel of its driverless car and was manually operating the vehicle at the time of the accident.

The accident was first reported when a reader of the auto blog, Jalopnik, submitted a snapshot of the self-driving Prius — with its unmistakable scanning device on the roof — parked on the street after rear-ending a another Prius. Several people, including a police officer, were at the scene.

The reader said he snapped the photo not far from Google’s headquarters in Mountain View.

No details have been released about the accident, other than to say there were no injuries. Google immediately issued a statement to Business Insider to clarify that the car’s systems and software were not to blame for the accident.

“Safety is our top priority. One of our goals is to prevent fender-benders like this one, which occurred while a person was manually driving the car.”

A Google spokesperson added that the car’s logs confirmed it was in manual mode at the time of the wreck.

Google’s self-driving cars use a combination of video cameras, radar sensors, and laser range finders to see other cars, according to PC World. They rely on Google Maps and Google Earth to navigate the road.

Google software engineer Sebastian Thrun noted in an October 2010 blog post that trained drivers and software engineers were inside the cars during all road tests.

Mountain View Car Accident Lawyerss

The trial attorneys at Blackman Legal Group, a California-based law firm founded by renowned trial attorney Clifford Blackman, have successfully represented car accident victims and their families for 35 years. The nationwide toll-free number to call for a free consultation is 1-866-692-8126.

A pickup truck driver and three teens were killed Tuesday when the truck ran a stop sign and collided with a Tulare County work crew van near Porterville. (Photo: ABC News)

Three people were killed and seven others seriously injured Tuesday when a pickup truck ran a stop sign and collided with a Tulare County work crew van just outside of Porterville, about 22 miles south of Visalia.

• A pickup truck ran a stop sign on a rural highway and collided with a van transporting a juvenile work crew.

• The vehicles collided and tumbled off the highway.

• The pickup truck driver and two of the teens died at the scene. Five others were hospitalized with major injuries.

The fatal passenger van accident occurred at about 11 a.m., according to a report in the Porterville Recorder.

California Highway Patrol Lieutenant James Swearingen said 37-year-old Porterville resident Juan Reyes was driving a J & W Tire Service pickup truck north on Road 152 when he arrived at the intersection of Highway 190 (Poplar Avenue) and ran the stop sign there.

At the same time, a Tulare County Probation Office van hauling a small trailer was headed eastbound on Highway 190. The van was transporting a juvenile work crew back to the probation office in Porterville after a community service assignment in Earlimart.

When Reyes ran the stop sign, the van wasn’t able to avoid slamming into it. The van T-boned the pickup truck and the impact sent both vehicles off the road and into a nearby cornfield.

Five passengers were ejected from the van. Two of them — 15-year-old Deshawn Moore and 17-year-old Ingrid Coronel, both of Porterville — were pronounced dead at the scene, as was Reyes.

Seven others sustained major injuries.

Two of the juveniles — 15-year-old Abel Auntunez of Lindsay and 16-year-old Robbie Hernandez of Porterville — were airlifted to Community Regional Medical Center in Fresno, where they remain in critical condition.

The van driver, 45-year-old Darrel Fitzgerald Drone of Lemoore, and four other juveniles — 17-year-old Sonny Gutierrez of Lindsay, 15-year-old Pablo Rodriguez, 17-year-old Edgar Saucedo and 15-year-old Reynaldo Millan, all of Porterville — were transported via ground ambulance to Kaweah Delta District Hospital in Visalia, where they remain hospitalized.

“They were probably working off community service, trying to pay their debt to society one way or another and then they are involved in an accident where they are killed or seriously injured,’ Visalia CHP public information officer Scott Harris told the Visalia Times-Delta. “It’s really sad.”

Tipton resident Eddie Martin, who lives on Road 152 near the intersection, said he’d seen six fatal accidents there in 20 years.

“When you’ve seen as many as I’ve seen here, it’s not surprising,” Martin said. “People know my corner as the bad corner. But the corner is only as bad as the people [who] drive here.”

The accident is still under investigation. The CHP said drugs and/or alcohol don’t appear to be a factor.

Visalia Passenger Van Accident Lawyers

The trial attorneys at Blackman Legal Group, a California-based law firm founded by renowned trial attorney Clifford Blackman, have successfully represented passenger van accident victims and their families for more than 35 years. The nationwide toll-free number to call for a free consultation is 1-866-692-8126.

A pickup truck driver was killed in a fiery big-rig crash near Fresno. (Photos: ABC News)

A pickup truck driver was killed Monday morning in a fiery head-on big-rig crash on Highway 145 near Fresno.

•   A pickup truck driver who was driving too fast crossed the center lane into oncoming traffic and crashed into a big-rig.

•   Both vehicles burst into flames.

•   The pickup truck driver was killed on impact. The big-rig driver escaped from his cab just before it was engulfed in flames.

•   The CHP said excessive speed was a factor. Alcohol and drugs were not involved.

The deadly highway crash occurred at 6:15 a.m., during the busy morning commute, according to a report in the Fresno Bee.

California Highway Patrol officer Brad Simpson said the Chevrolet pickup truck was traveling south on Highway 145 at a speed of about 55 mph when it crossed over the center divide into the northbound lane, directly into the path of a semi truck.

The pickup went out of control, spun around, and crashed into the big-rig. Both vehicles immediately burst into flames.

The pickup driver was killed on impact, Simpson said, but the big-rig driver managed to climb out of his cab just moments before it caught fire.

“The big-rig was completely engulfed,” Simpson told ABC News.

The big-rig driver  suffered a burn injury to his arm and also had pain in his leg. News reports did not state whether he was hospitalized.

Neither of the drivers’ names were released.

Caltrans shut down the highway for several hours while firefighters extinguished the fire and emergency crews cleared the roadway.

The CHP said alcohol and drugs were not factors in the accident. The ABC News story stated that speed was likely a factor, but other reports did not address that.

Here are more photos of the fatal accident. Click on a thumbnail to see it full-size.

Rural Highways are Dangerous

Only 23 percent of the U.S. population lives in rural areas, but 57 percent of all motor vehicle accident fatalities occur on rural roads, according to the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration(NHTSA).

The NHTSA’s latest figures show that the fatality rate per vehicle miles traveled was 2.5 times higher in rural areas than in urban areas.

A large majority of car accident deaths in rural areas — 67 percent — occur on highways, where the speed limit is 55 mph or higher. In urban areas, the opposite is true: 68 percent of all fatal crashes occur on roads where the speed limit is less than 50 mph.

Rural highways often are only two lanes, which presents significant danger to motorists who use the oncoming traffic lane to pass at high speed.

Finally, hospitals are few and far between in rural areas. The risk of dying on the way to the hospital is significantly higher in a rural accident than an urban one.

Fresno Truck Accident Lawyers

The trial attorneys at Blackman Legal Group, a California-based law firm founded by renowned trial attorney Clifford Blackman, have successfully represented truck accident victims and their families for 35 years. The nationwide toll-free number to call for a free consultation is 1-866-692-8126.

A San Ramon woman slipped and fell to her death while descending Half-Dome in Yosemite.

Yosemite’s second fatal accident in two weeks took the life of a 26-year-old San Ramon woman who slipped and fell from the Half Dome cables at the national park on Sunday.

•   A hiker and three friends who had a permit to climb Half Dome were among about 20 hikers who made the ascent Sunday morning.

•  At 11 a.m., park officials started sending Twitter messages warning of a thunderstorm. The rains made the granite peak especially slippery.

•   The San Ramon woman successfully climbed Half Dome but slipped and fell 600 feet down from the park-installed cables on her way down. She died at the scene.

The accident occurred shortly before noon, according to a report in the San Ramon Express.

Yosemite Park Ranger Kari Cobb said Hayley LaFlamme had had a permit to climb Half Dome. She made the ascent with three friends. They were among a group of about 20 hikers who climbed the mountain that morning despite the possibility of rain, which can make the granite peak extremely slippery.

At about 11 a.m., park officials started sending messages on Twitter about a thunder storm, according to an Associated Press report. But LaFlamme and her friends were already on the mountain.

The San Ramon hiker successfully made the 8.5-mile climb to the top of Half Dome. She was on her way back down, using cables installed by park officials, when she somehow slipped and fell 600 feet down from the shoulder of the dome where the cables end, Cobb said.

The park’s emergency communications center received a 911 call reporting that a hiker had fallen from the cables. Park rangers responded to the scene but LaFlamme already had died.

The fatal accident was the second in two weeks. On July 19, three hikers were swept over the rushing Vernal Fall after they climbed over a metal railing and entered the Merced River. (Read more: Presumed Dead: Three Hikers Swept Over Raging Yosemite Waterfall)

“A lot of people who visit Yosemite aren’t necessarily familiar with nature,” Cobb said. “They are really out of their element and may not understand the force of nature and what they may encounter in nature.”

But Fresno State psychology professor Paul Price doesn’t blame the park visitors, especially when trails are kept open under dangerous conditions.

“If the trail isn’t closed, people tend to take that as a source of information: Wouldn’t they tell us not to do it if it were dangerous?” Price said.

The last person to fall and die on Half Dome was Majoj Kumar, also of San Ramon. He died in June 2009. The hikers who witnessed the fall were so frightened that 40 of them refused to move and had to be rescued, Cobb said.

Yosemite Injury Lawyers

The trial attorneys at Blackman Legal Group, a California-based law firm founded by renowned trial attorney Clifford Blackman, have successfully represented injured travelers and their families for more than 35 years.  The nationwide toll-free number to call for a free consultation is 1-866-692-8126.