A 66-year-old man is dead after his car slammed into two parked vehicles on a residential Antioch street, and officers who arrived at the scene found him unconscious behind the wheel. The driver, who was the only person in the car, was rushed to a local hospital, where he later died. Antioch police have not released his identity.
The crash happened just after 3:30 PM on the 5100 block of Arroyo Way near Chaparral Park, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Antioch police responded to the reported crash and found the man slumped in the driver’s seat. Contra Costa County Fire Prevention District responders transported him to the hospital, but he did not survive.
It remains unclear whether the driver lost consciousness before the crash or as a result of it, the Chronicle reports. Antioch police are still investigating the cause of the collision, and no additional details about the man have been made public.
How Investigators Determine What Came First
That question — whether a medical episode caused the crash, or the crash caused the medical episode — is exactly the kind of ambiguity California’s coroner system is built to resolve. When a fatal collision’s cause isn’t immediately obvious, such as when a driver loses consciousness behind the wheel, the county coroner is required to investigate and perform an autopsy to determine whether a medical emergency preceded the crash or whether the death resulted from traumatic injuries, according to Maison Law. Under California Government Code Section 27491.25, coroners and medical examiners are also required to conduct blood alcohol and biological drug screening on any driver who dies in a motor vehicle collision, a step that helps investigators rule out impairment as a factor…