Teenager in Critical Condition After Four-Vehicle Crash Thursday

The 18-year-old Stamford driver of one of the four cars involved in a crash on New Canaan’s Silvermine Road shortly before sunset Thursday has been transferred to Yale-New Haven Hospital, where he remains in critical condition, according to New Canaan police.

The three other drivers in the crash did not have life-threatening injuries, a police spokeswoman said. All of the information below (except in parentheses) came from the New Canaan police news briefing on Monday morning:

Two of the cars involved in the crash were going east and two were headed west on Silvermine Avenue, 375 feet from its intersection with Clapboard Hill Rd. at about 5:34 p.m. on Thursday, when more than one person called police to report the crash.

There were no passengers in any of the vehicles, which were driven by:

• A Stamford man, 18, driving a 2003 four-door Subaru driving east, toward Wilton
• A Wilton woman, 41, driving a 2011 Audi sport utility vehicle, also driving east
• A New Canaan woman, 50, driving a 2010 Chevrolet, driving west
• A Norwalk man, 50, driving a 2013 four-door BMW, driving west

The cars in front, traveling in each direction, collided head on, police said. One, driven by the New Canaan woman, went into woods by the north side of the road (the side where vehicles driving west would be) and sustained heavy front-end damage; it wound up on its side. Two other vehicles ended up on the shoulder of the road, and the fourth stopped in the eastbound lane with front-end damage.

All the vehicles were severely damaged and had to be towed from the scene.

The crash is still under investigation. Before anyone is charged, police want to speak to all witnesses, and one reason preventing that is that police haven’t been able to talk with the teenager being treated at Yale-New Haven.

There have been reports saying one of the driver’s was ejected from a vehicle, but the spokeswoman, Sgt. Carol Ogrinc, said she could not confirm that. She said that in general it’s very difficult for someone properly wearing a seatbelt to be ejected from a vehicle. Air bags deployed in each of the four vehicles.

Many details of the event four days ago have not yet been released, including: Which two cars initially crashed; which car or cars drove outside of the proper lane; why that happened; whether all drivers were wearing seat belts; the conditions of the other three drivers; whether any of the cars were totalled.