Car veers off Interstate 5 into a San Diego backyard

A car went off southbound Interstate 5 near Mission Bay in San Diego early on Wednesday, Nov. 4, and landed on its side in a residential backyard, closing a freeway lane that was expected to stay shut for several hours.

A SIG Alert was issued for the crash Wednesday morning, ABC 10 News San Diego reported. The alert put the vehicle on southbound I-5 near a point identified as Mission Bay South, with Garnet and Balboa noted in parentheses, when it went off the freeway and came to rest on its side. The number 4 lane was expected to be closed for several hours.

Whether anyone was hurt was not clear. The report did not say how many people were in the car or identify the driver, and it gave no account of what happened to anyone inside after the vehicle came down.

What the alert said

The interchange named in the alert is the one signed for Garnet Avenue and Balboa Avenue, where southbound I-5 runs with Mission Bay on its western side and residential streets on its eastern side. An exit guide for the interchange describes houses lining those streets, their yards close to the edge of the freeway corridor.

Neither the street where the car came to rest nor the owner of the property was identified, and no block or address was given for the backyard.

The alert is a traffic notice rather than an incident report. It fixes the freeway, the direction of travel, the lane out of service and the time the closure was expected to last, and it carries nothing about the people involved or the make of the car.

How the car left the freeway was not described. The report did not say whether it struck a barrier or another vehicle first, how far it traveled between the lanes and the yard, or how it was removed from the property.

A lane closed for hours

The number 4 lane was expected to be closed for several hours. The alert did not say whether any other lane was affected, and the report gave no estimate of the backup behind the closure.

The report mentioned neither an arrest nor a citation. It did not say whether anyone had been interviewed about what happened in the moments before the car left the lanes.

No clock time appears in the account. The crash is placed on Wednesday morning, with no hour given for when the vehicle went off the freeway or when the SIG Alert went out, and no time recorded for the reopening of the number 4 lane.

The California Highway Patrol is investigating the cause of the crash. No preliminary finding was given, and the account did not say whether the driver remained at the scene.

The one physical detail the alert records about the wreck is its final position, on its side in a backyard off the southbound lanes.

Where the freeway meets homes

Interstate 5 is the main north-south freeway through San Diego, and the segment at the Garnet and Balboa interchange runs along the eastern edge of Mission Bay. The exit guide for the interchange lists residential streets on the inland side of the corridor, with the same ramps carrying traffic west toward the coast.

Houses in that corridor back onto the streets closest to the freeway, according to the exit guide. Whether the car crossed a shoulder or an embankment before it reached the yard was not described, and no measurement was given for the distance it covered.

What the property looked like afterward is not in the public account, which gives no description of damage to the house, the fence or the yard.

No detail was given on the emergency response. The report did not say how many units were sent to the freeway or to the street behind it, how long they stayed, or who made the decision to close the number 4 lane. It also did not say whether traffic was briefly stopped while crews worked.

The crash in brief

A car traveling south on Interstate 5 near Mission Bay left the freeway on Wednesday morning and ended up on its side in a San Diego backyard. A SIG Alert followed, and the number 4 lane was expected to be closed for several hours. Whether anyone was hurt was not clear.

What a SIG Alert means

A SIG Alert is issued on California freeways for any unplanned event that closes one lane of traffic for 30 minutes or more, according to the California Highway Patrol.

In practice, the designation told drivers that one southbound lane at the Mission Bay interchange was out of service and would stay out for hours. It said nothing about who was in the car or how it got into the yard.

The alert singles out the number 4 lane, without describing where the vehicle crossed the edge of the roadway or whether traffic was held at any point while it was recovered.

The report gave no indication of speed or of road conditions, and it did not say whether any factor had been ruled in or out. Nothing in the account pointed to a second vehicle, and none was named in the alert.

Several hours was an expectation set when the alert went out, not a record of how long the lane stayed closed.

Still under investigation

The cause of the crash remained under investigation as of the station's report on Wednesday, with no determination published and no timeline given for one. Whether anyone was hurt, and who was driving, are absent from the public account.