A Pine Grove driver lost his life Feb. 14 on Highway 88 near Toyon Road when his car hit an oak tree and rolled onto its side.

Photo by: Bill Lavallie

If January was relatively peaceful on county roadways, a recent spate of February highway deaths has shattered that quiet as the month comes to a violent end.

The fatal traffic collision that took the life of a Pine Grove man Feb. 14 is still under investigation, according to Officer John Hardey of the CHP's Amador County unit in Jackson.

Witnesses reported the driver, 58-year-old Ronald Ceballos, was driving erratically, stopping his silver 1999 Cadillac sedan well before a stop light demarcation and then barreling off the north side of Highway 88 west of Toyon Road and into a large oak tree at full speed. The front end of the vehicle split open as the car tumbled onto its side on a lumpy slant of brown leaves and became engulfed in flames. Ceballos was pronounced dead at the scene due to multiple injuries sustained in the crash.

"We have not ruled out alcohol as a factor, (but) we don't believe it was intentional," Hardey said last Tuesday.

Ceballos' daughter Loretta said her grandmother, Ronald's mother, received a message on her answering machine in Santa Clara County while her son was driving, shortly before the crash. Earlier in the day, he had been served a restraining order by sheriff's officers to vacate the home he had been sharing with his girlfriend. In the message, Ronald asked if he could stay with his mother at her San Jose home. He had two daughters and nine grandchildren. It was Valentine's Day when he died.

"My dad, he was never a fast driver or anything," Loretta said.

This most recent traffic fatality pulled the county within one of last year's totals for January and February. During the first two months in 2007, there were four traffic fatalities. "So we're right on track," Hardey observed, "and February's not over yet. We got another week to go."

There were rampant rumors of a fourth traffic fatality in Fiddletown Thursday afternoon, but they turned out to be unfounded.

The California Highway Patrol received a call around 4:30 p.m. Thursday that a driver was trapped in a white Toyota following a collision on Fiddletown Road west of Shakeridge Road. But the driver walked away from the crash and there was only minor property damage. As a result, a report of the incident was not filed.

There were four minor accidents Friday and at least one Saturday.

This year started with a quiet January, a trend that has quickly turned through the first three weeks of February. It took all of five days in 2007 to notch the first road death, which occurred in a head-on collision near Ione. Last year's fourth traffic death came as a result of a Feb. 15 motorcycle crash, which occurred one week after a Pine Grove woman lost her life in an auto wreck. Thirteen people died in traffic accidents last year.

Deadly motorcycle deaths aren't unusual in the county. There are four to six every year, Hardey said, simply because of the geographic nature of the area, which features twisty, unforgiving roads, and plenty of potential driving hazards, like loose gravel.

"It's the nature of the roadways. They're going to hit a lot more hazards," he said. "There's no rhyme or reason."

It was loose gravel that contributed to the death of a Stockton motorcyclist earlier this month on Feb. 3. Patrick Broekhoven, 38, had spotted the small rocks as he was curling around a right-hand curve on Stoney Creek Road north of Buena Vista Road that cloudy afternoon. In attempting to avoid hitting the gravel, Broekhoven hit his brakes, fishtailing his 2007 Kawasaki motorcycle into an oncoming Chevrolet driving the opposite direction at 35 mph. The head-on collision killed Broekhoven.

There was another deadly motorcycle wreck the morning of Feb. 13. Just before 6 a.m. On a cool, clear Wednesday, a Fair Oaks man lost control of his 2007 Harley Davidson motorcycle in the middle of a right-hand curve on Pine Grove Volcano Road. Jerry Hudson's bike sped off the road and into a dirt embankment, propelling the 53-year-old off the motorcycle. Hudson likely died as a result of the motorcycle landing on top of him.

"That particular case we also had a lack of evasive action taking place," Hardey said, who added that the investigation was still ongoing.

As spring brings more fair weather days, Hardey expects more motorcyclists to take to the scenic county roads. It's something that happens every year. Traditionally, Hilltop Road in the Pioneer area has been the scene of frequent crashes, some of them deadly. And in most cases, Hardey said, motorcycle accidents occur as a result of driver error. "Ultimately, the riders are failing to (adjust to conditions)."

In a county that tallies 10 to 15 fatal crashes a year, Hardey knows not to bet against history.

"That's the way things go," he said. "We know when man and machine get together, sometimes there's going to be tragedy. We'd like that not to be the case, but we're not going to be naive about it."