A potential catastrophic collision was narrowly avoided in Fairfield Monday when authorities pulled over a disoriented elderly driver on I-80 who was filmed driving the wrong way, passing oncoming traffic within feet, and the CHP is spreading the word about its senior driver education class.

As KRON4 reports, the California Highway Patrol responded to reports of a wrong-way driver on I-80 in Fairfield around 5:50 pm Monday. The below video footage from the CHP shows the driver traveling within feet of oncoming traffic in the westbound express lane.

CHP and Fairfield police officers blocked traffic and safely pulled over the driver, which was also caught on video.

“Officers determined the elderly female driver was confused and disoriented after contacting her,” CHP wrote on social media. “She was safely reunited with her family.”

Authorities will be reviewing the woman’s driving status, but no further details were provided.

The CHP urges drivers 65 and older to take part in the agency’s senior driver education class, called “Age Well, Drive Smart,” on driving safely as we age and how to conduct self-assessments.

“What could have been a serious crash was safely prevented due to the phenomenal teamwork and coordination by CHP and FPD,” wrote the Solano County CHP. “This incident serves as a reminder that driving needs can change over time.”

Image: Screenshot/CHP Solano

The Friday night dance party takes place on an I-80 overpass in Berkeley, a daytime protest hotspot, transforming the bridge into a glowing display of support for the Bay Area community and those protecting democracy, while urging an estimated 12,000 cars per hour to "honk" in solidarity.

Since January, a group of local residents of all ages called NICE (Not ICE), spearheaded by activist Jennifer Quinn, have been donning their frog costumes and glo-sticks and heading to the I-80 pedestrian overpass in Berkeley (at University Avenue) for a weekly, disco-style "Visibility Dance Party" every Friday night.

“Bring the kids, snacks to share, a community spirit, bubbles, delights, twinkle lights, bring your art, and come as you are,” says the group’s Indivisible page.

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As the SF Standard reports, the overpass is a popular, long-held hotspot for holding protests due to its high visibility — the group’s Indivisible page estimates 12,000 cars fly under the bridge every hour.

“Every honk is somebody saying, ‘Yes, we agree,’” Quinn told KPIX. “We are here to protect our democracy and our community, and this is just a really fun way to do that.”

Quinn told KPIX the concept was first spawned by a costume joke last Halloween. She then attended a daytime protest on the bridge in January and met Indivisible East Bay volunteer Maria Shanle. The two came up with the idea to transform the space at night when the bridge is essentially empty, but the freeway below is highly active, per the Standard.

The organizers aim to keep the event bright and accessible for everyone, especially families.

It’s “something new and fresh for the drivers,” Shanle told the Standard, as she handed out treats and strobe lights to attendees. “A very positive, open, welcoming and family-friendly environment.”

The dance party format helps bring people together from all walks of life.

“There’s an interesting confluence of energy that’s taking place here,” Vera Chang, a professor of environmental justice at St. Mary’s College, who attended the dance party with her family, told the Standard. “People are reaching deep inside themselves for reasons to have hope and to generate change.”

“The idea of going to protest is really intimidating to a lot of people, even if people feel strongly about the encroachment of tyranny,” said Quinn.

Quinn told the Standard she’s looking to hire a DJ who can “make teenagers dance,” and she hopes to inspire people to make new connections at the dance party.

“NICE stands for ‘now it counts everyone.’ Now, everyone's got to show up. Got to show up for community,” Quinn told KPIX. “And you can start here and make some friends.”

Image: Indivisible

A small plane was able to safely land along a Bay Area freeway Monday morning during rush hour, and no cars were hit and no one was injured.

It had the makings of a disaster Monday when a small, single-engine plane had to make an emergency landing on a roadway in Cupertino.

The plane made its landing around 7 am on southbound Highway 85 just south of Stevens Creek Boulevard, as the CHP reported on Xitter. The pilot was able to land the 14-foot plane along the shoulder of the freeway — landing head-on into traffic — and avoided clipping any passing cars.

As KTVU reports, via Brooks Jarosz, a spokesperson for the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office, the pilot had run out of gas and had to bring down the plane on a roadway.

The two right-hand lanes of southbound 85 were closed after 7 am as emergency crews arrived and as a tow truck came to remove the plane, per KTVU.

According to the FAA, the plane is a single-engine CubCrafters CC11, and had just the pilot onboard.

Update: The pilot, Peterson Conway, spoke to ABC 7 and explained exactly what happened. Conway regularly commutes from a farm in Carmel by plane to Palo Alto, and he says he called ahead Monday morning to his airport in Carmel to "top off" his gas tank, but that may not have happened.

"I started to lose my engine, made a mayday call into the Palo Alto airport, my destination," Conway tells the station. They tried to divert him to Minetta San Jose Airport, but he knew he couldn't make it there, so he started aiming for some football fields.

"I then saw kids out in the football field I was trying to make and I couldn't make that. Northbound traffic on 85 was back-to-back and nobody would be able to see me coming down on top of them so I opted to land on the southbound lane."

Conway explains his landing, heading into oncoming traffic: "I turned on all of my lights, the cars started to separate, there were a couple of high-speed Porsche SUVs heading my way playing chicken and I was rocking my wings to try and get everyone's attention and I had to put it down," he said. "Stuck the landing, I mean that's what these planes are made for."

The Garlic Shoppe, a recognizable pitstop for thousands of travelers who relish in the unique garlic-themed offerings at the busy crossroads of Highway 101 and State Route 25 in Gilroy, is being uprooted from its long-time home.

The abrupt move was mandated by the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Agency (VTA), which, under eminent domain, acquired the property to build a new intersection at the location, per KSBW.

It’s reportedly part of a nearly $140 million project to replace Highway 25's two-lane over-crossing with a four-lane over-crossing over Highway 101, increase the length of Highway 101 off-ramp, upgrade traffic signals, and add bike lanes.  The VTA fast-tracked the project at the beginning of this year, according to the Chronicle. And when it did, the Garlic Shoppe location came under fire because it in particular has a higher-than-average rate of accidents.

The owners, brothers Alex and Charlie Larson, told KSBW that they found out days before they were required to move. As Charlie told the outlet, “We've been here for 39 years. Alex is 62, and I'm 63. We are planning to retire a few years...now we have to basically start all over again."

The Garlic Shoppe is apparently planning to migrate to its sister winery, Rapazzini Winery, just down the street. The Larson brothers say they will continue selling their garlic-infused products there until the end of the year, when they'll hopefully be able to find a new permanent home for the store.

Feature image via Google Street View.

A couple who were headed to Kaiser Hospital in San Francisco on Friday morning were forced to pull over in the midst of traffic after the wife's water broke and the baby was wasting no time coming out. As KTVU reports, father Hanna Sahourieh of San Bruno pulled their SUV over right where 101 and 80 split off, got out of the car, got honked at several times, and came around to the side of the car where his wife, Naomi, was very close to delivering a 9-pound, 1-ounce baby boy.

As Hanna tells KTVU, "Right when I saw the head start to come out I just parked the car." And he adds that the baby just "popped right out and he landed on my hand right there."

While some women might suffer through labor for hours, Naomi Sahourieh got a good and fast surprise with her second child, who she has named Jiries Hanna Sahourieh, and who did not care to sit through another minute of morning traffic on 101. He was delivered, healthy and crying, at 10:49 a.m., and the couple drove to Kaiser anyway to make sure he got a thorough examination.

In an odd coincidence (maybe because of the heatwave?), a second baby was born on a different section of northbound 101 in Novato, on Saturday morning, also delivered by its father.

[KTVU]

Late last week, a terrified-looking female Chihuahua was found stranded, trembling on the center divider on an Interstate 680 overpass in Walnut Creek. Lacking treats to talk the animal down, California Highway Patrol officers had to coax her off the ledge using bits of a protein bar.

CHP Officer Alex Edmon and his partner found the puppy after receiving calls about a distressed dog running in lanes of traffic and sitting on the center median. "We attempted to coax it, we could tell it was very frightened, it was shaking," Edmon told NBC. "We were able to pet it a little bit, but other than that we could tell it was not happy."

One of the officers snapped a photo of the rescue, which the Contra Costa County CHP office must have recognized as a perfect opportunity to engage with the community on social media, tweeting out: "This little dog needed some help off I-680 freeway today. We're glad he's safe."

Once photos were taken and the Chihuahua was lured to safety, CHP officers delivered the pup to the county's Animal Care and Control shelter, where KRON4 reporter Dan Rubin found the poor girl still trembling from the trauma (or because, she's a chihuahua.) over a day later. Without a name for the puppy, Rubin has dubbed her, "Freeway":

After a mandatory three days on watch at Animal Care and Control in Martinez, Freeway was made available for adoption. Due to Freeway's instant celebrity status, there was a flood of interest in bringing her home, but as Officer Edmon pointed out, no one should be discouraged if they can't adopt the one trembling puppy they saw on the news. There are plenty of pups worthy of your adoption.

As for her old owners — who, presumably, are terrible people who should have never owned a dog in the first place — there were no witnesses who saw Freeway (or Princess, or Tinkerbell or whatever her name was in a previous life) being dropped off on that overpass. According to CHP, dogs on the roads are surprisingly common. "As sad as it sounds," CHP Officer John Fransen told KRON4, "it actually happens pretty often.”

[KRON4]
[NBC]

Photo by Jason Rodman.

Details are few, but the westbound portion of I-580 was completely shut down by the CHP at 2:45 this afternoon as police are searching for a suspect in an attempted robbery and shooting. A witness tells the Tribune that around 2 p.m. a car pulled up alongside a woman walking on the 4000 block of MacArthur Boulevard, demanded her purse and then shot her twice in the legs. As far as we understand, the freeway remains closed between High Street and 35th Avenue. There's no estimated time for the reopening of the freeway, and traffic is being redirected onto Macarthur Boulevard. More as this develops... [Tribune]

Yee hah! Right in front of SFist HQ on Stillman Street in SOMA, we spotted a daredevil who said his name is Troy taking advantage of the weekend emptiness to practice some of his mad skillz on a motorcycle.

More pictures, including a portrait of the stunt artist, here.

A 45-year-old Gilroy man was struck and killed by a 29-year-old Woodside man's BMW early this morning on I-280. According to reports, the unidentified man might have been "a passenger on a tour bus that had stopped nearby" who walked directly into on coming traffic. After being stuck by the initial vehicle, the victim was pummeled by a few other cars as well. But this is all speculative, we should point out, as the CHP has yet to figure it all out yet. If you have information about this morning's gruesome accident, contact Officer Mike Sarabia at 650-=369-6261, ext. 332.

A 21-year-old man, Marcus Russell, was shot and killed on I-580 yesterday afternoon. His female passenger was also hit, but managed to survive. According to Richmond police, the 19-year-old passenger claims "two men in a full-sized red van shot at least 12 rounds at them from a semi-automatic weapon while both vehicles were traveling eastbound on the highway prior to Bayview Avenue just after 4 p.m." She allegedly does not know the suspects or why they shot at them. CBS 5 (via BCN) reports that "they could find no witnesses to the attack, despite the fact that it took place on a busy highway." Also, "there was no apparent altercation before the shooting."

The Bay Area's first-ever "high occupancy toll" lane will hit 680 next year. The HOT lanes, according to KCBS, "would be designated for non-carpool drivers who pay a toll to use a high occupancy vehicle or HOV/carpool lane." In addition to easing traffic and generating revenue, the HOT lanes will now allow solo drivers to take a ride in the VIP lanes. The premiere HOT lane will "stretch 14 miles on southbound 680 between Alameda and Santa Clara counties."