Caltrans was hit with a lawsuit over a pileup in a Highway 50 construction zone that killed a Northern California father last January.
The complaint calls the half-billion-dollar Fix 50 project “a magnet for collisions, injuries and fatalities.” Fix 50’s central aim is to alleviate traffic on Highway 50 with the addition of high-occupancy lanes. Construction began 2021 and is still underway, although the remaining lane splits were removed last month.
Brian Kipton Shaw, 42, of Paradise was riding a motorcycle Jan. 12, 2025, with a group of 13 bikes and two cars from the Vituscan Riders Motorcycle Club. The group was traveling west in the far left lane near the Stockton Boulevard exit when, the lawsuit says, a driver approaching a lane split in the middle of the roadway veered into the group. According to the lawsuit, the driver clipped a motorcyclist and then slammed on his brakes, causing a pile-up. Boxed in by the single-lane area of the construction zone, the motorcyclists were unable to avoid collisions, and they hit the sedan, each other, the concrete barrier to their left or the concrete construction barriers to their right…