BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KERO) — Watching out for hazards, pedestrians, and distracted drivers is a common part of driving a car, but drivers in Bakersfield are having to contend with something much more unsettling.
You could be driving on the highway, when all of a sudden, a rock hits your windshield and everything changes. It's how Bakersfield driver Nely Bojoiquez felt when it happened to her.
"Your life could just change in a split second," said Bojoiquez.
According to Bojoiquez, she was driving with her family when a rock hit her car.
"Everything just went black in my head," said Bojoiquez. "Everything just went black and I just started screaming, telling my brother 'I'm bleeding, I'm bleeding!' And I started feeling even my tooth feel loose."
The incident happened on October 23 when Bojoiquez was driving on the highway headed to Las Vegas with her family.
"When it happened, I honestly thought it was a gun," said Bojoiquez. "We got in an accident or it was a gun because the impact on it… it was not little."
Bojoiquez is not the only driver with a story like this. Tammy Duket was driving on the 58 in November when she says this happened to her car.
"We were driving on the 58 freeway between Union Avenue and the Chester Ave exit, and all of a sudden we had an explosion in my car, and my window imploded and shattered glass all over the inside of my car, all over us. And we found a rock," described Duket.
The rock hit Duket's son.
"I thought someone had shot my son, because that's how it sounded," said Duket. "My son's reactions, the glass everywhere. I thought my car had been shot at."
It all happened so fast, Duket's son couldn't even tell how badly he'd been hurt.
"My son actually thought he had glass in his eyes because he took the full impact of the implosion of glass, so luckily we were very blessed and he did not have glass in his eyes, but we did have to spend about two to three hours in the ER to make sure he was okay," said Duket.
Duket's son was fortunate, but Bojoiquez ended up being injured by the rock that hit her car.
"People might think, 'Oh, a rock,' and you just throw it. No, no, no, no, no. See, my brother was probably going at, like, 70 roughly, so I don't know the speed of the rock that was thrown, I can't say. So put those two together, and that's the impact that it hit me," as Bojoiquez speaks, she points to three different places on her face, ending with her eye.
While Bojoiquez did not lose her eyesight, doctors who treated her injuries at the hospital ultimately told her the rock that hit her had fractured her face in three places.
"They couldn't believe. They were like, 'A rock? How does a rock do that much damage?'" said Bojoquez.
Since being injured, Bojoiquez has experienced a ripple effect of problems, from having to get her car fixed, to the medical problems, to not being able to work.
"It put me out of work for almost two moths, and I'm still waiting to find out if I'm going to end up needing surgery or not," said Bojoiquez.
The California Highway Patrol says that if your car is hit by a rock, the most important thing to do is be safe. Carefully pull over, stop, and call 911. Someone will come out to take an incident report. If you see someone throwing rocks at traffic, remember as much as you can about their clothes and appearance so officers can put it in their report.
The penalties for throwing rocks at moving cars can be severe. California Vehicle Code 23110 makes it a crime to throw any object or substance at or onto any car moving on any California roadway. Depending on the specific facts of the case, someone caught throwing rocks at cars on the freeway could face a felony conviction and a prison term of up to three years.
