ENCINITAS — As Cardiff 101 Executive Director Roberta Walker continues to recover from the critical injuries she suffered when a truck struck her bicycle earlier this month, San Diego Sheriff’s traffic investigators continue their probe into the incident.
Sheriff’s Sgt. Luis Chavez said Dec. 18 that investigators with the Sheriff’s Traffic Accident Reconstruction team, or STAR team, were still trying to piece together the events that led to the accident along Coast Highway 101 in the early morning hours of Dec. 8 in Leucadia.
“We’re still in the process of looking for witnesses, conducting interviews and recreating the incident,” Chavez said. “This may take a few weeks.”
Chavez said that they haven’t found a person who witnessed the incident firsthand, which is understandable given that the accident happened before sunrise.
“There weren’t a lot of people around,” he said.
The length of the investigation will also depend on the number of accidents the team is investigating at the time, Chavez said.
Chavez said that any speculation about the cause of the accident at this point is just that — speculation.
Walker was struck shortly after 6 a.m. on North Coast Highway 101 near the Phoebe Street intersection in front of the Leucadia Post Office. The impact of the collision threw her a significant distance and she was briefly unconscious.
According to both Sheriff’s officials and Walker’s family, both Walker and the truck were headed southbound in the “sharrow” lane, a lane designated for both bicycle and vehicle use.
Walker, an avid cyclist and an advocate for bicycle and pedestrian safety, has been hospitalized at Scripps Memorial Hospital La Jolla since the accident, undergoing several major surgeries and placed in a medically induced coma.
According to the blog dedicated to chronicling Walker’s recovery, she was most recently being treated for an infection and doctors also discovered a blood clot in her leg.
“They have started to slowly wean her from one of her sedatives to move closer to waking her up, but she has to prove that she can and will breath on her own before they can remove the ventilator,” the blog reads.
