CARLSBAD — A predawn head-on collision caused by a wrong-way driver on Interstate 5 just south of Agua Hedionda Lagoon left two people seriously injured on Friday and a motorist under arrest on suspicion of DUI.
The 35-year-old suspected drunk driver was headed north on the southbound side of the freeway shortly after 4:30 a.m. on Dec. 1 when his Dodge Ram 1500 pickup truck crashed into an oncoming Audi sedan near Cannon Road in Carlsbad, according to the California Highway Patrol.
The collision left the 20-year-old man behind the wheel of the car and a 19-year-old woman who had been riding in it with severe but apparently non-life-threatening injuries, CHP public-affairs Officer Hunter Gerber said.
The driver of the Dodge – who suffered minor injuries in the wreck – and the woman managed to get out of the crushed vehicles on their own, but emergency crews had to free the driver of the Audi from the wreckage, Gerber said.
Paramedics then took the Audi driver and the woman to Scripps Memorial Hospital La Jolla. An ambulance crew transported the wrong-way driver, whose name was not immediately available, to the same San Diego trauma center after officers arrested him on suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol, the CHP spokesman said.
The wreck left southbound lanes on the freeway blocked in the area until about 8 a.m., the Highway Patrol reported.
