Kyle Shanahan Breaks Silence — Reveals How Car Accident Really Happened, Why He Was “At Fault”
This article was originally published on Total Pro Sports.
San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan has publicly accepted responsibility for the serious car crash that sidelined him at the start of training camp.
Speaking with reporters Tuesday, Shanahan said he wanted to correct one key detail that had circulated after public crash records surfaced.
According to ESPN’s Nick Wagoner, Shanahan said the collision occurred after his cellphone slipped between the seats of his Tesla.
“He wanted to clarify right up front that the accident was his fault,” Wagoner posted on X. “He took eyes off the road to find his phone which fell between seats and when he looked up he had gone over the line and into an SUV.”
Shanahan also clarified another widely reported point.
He said he never lost consciousness and did not suffer amnesia after the crash. Instead, he described the concussion as serious but said he remembered the entire incident.
Kyle Shanahan Says Clerical Error Caused Confusion Over Crash Responsibility
Shanahan’s comments directly contradicted information that appeared in California’s crash reporting database.
That database listed the other driver as the primary cause of the collision, prompting widespread reports that a 21-year-old woman had made an unsafe turn. However, Shanahan said that the information resulted from a clerical error.
49ers vice president of security Jeremy Jones has also disclosed that Palo Alto police told him the statewide crash database contained a clerical input error, per the San Francisco Chronicle.
Another reporter, Grant Cohn, also reported that Shanahan gathered beat writers specifically to set the record straight.
“Kyle Shanahan just called the beat writers into his office to tell us that he was at fault for his car crash,” Cohn shared. “He swerved into her lane.”
The updated explanation answers one of the biggest questions surrounding the crash, but it also raises questions about how the incorrect information entered the state’s reporting system in the first place.
