A Groveland woman was lucky to be alive after she fell asleep while driving a Jeep Wrangler on Tuolumne Road and crashed into two trees in the Sonora area of Tuolumne County on Thursday morning. Carol Schutt, 66, was driving eastbound about 6:20 a.m. east of Woodham Carne Road when her SUV drifted off the roadway.
The Jeep hit one tree, kept moving in a southeasterly direction, then struck a second tree and came to rest, according to the California Highway Patrol. Schutt sustained minor injuries and was taken to Doctors Medical Center in Modesto for treatment.
That sequence matters because it shows how quickly a sleepy-driver crash can turn violent. The CHP said the Jeep was a 2021 model and that alcohol or drugs are not suspected to have played a role. It also said driving while sleepy is dangerous, and that fatigue slows reaction time and can trigger microsleeps, those uncontrollable lapses of sleep that can last from fractions of a second to a few seconds. In serious wrecks like this, the questions people ask an accident lawyer are often the same ones investigators ask first: how the crash happened, what the driver noticed, and what damage followed.
The collision was documented by CHP photos as a rollover crash, adding another layer to a scene that already had two tree impacts and a roadside stop. The detail that matters is not just that Schutt survived, but that she was alert enough to survive a crash pattern the CHP says can unfold in seconds when fatigue takes over. For drivers, the answer is plain enough: sleepy driving can be as dangerous as anything on the road, and this one ended with minor injuries instead of something far worse.
