A motorcyclist was killed Wednesday morning after falling off his bike in the fast lane of the southbound 405 Freeway near the 101 Freeway interchange in Sherman Oaks, and was then struck by passing vehicles, according to witnesses. The crash triggered a hard closure of southbound lanes, stranding commuters in gridlock that stretched for miles across the San Fernando Valley.
The collision was reported at approximately 11:15 a.m. near Burbank Boulevard, prompting a response from the California Highway Patrol and the Los Angeles Fire Department, according to CBS Los Angeles. Witnesses told FOX 11 Los Angeles that the rider fell off his motorcycle in the fast lanes and was struck by passing vehicles. First responders arrived to find the motorcyclist lying in lane 1, and a firefighter pronounced him dead at the scene. The victim's identity has not been released.
Hard Closure Snarls Valley Commute
Authorities placed a hard closure on the southbound lanes and diverted traffic toward Burbank Boulevard as the investigation got underway, per the same FOX 11 report. The backup stretched over five miles north to Nordhoff Street in North Hills before the California Highway Patrol reopened two lanes around 12:10 p.m., according to MyNewsLA. Commuters were encouraged to seek alternative routes as the roadway remained snarled through the midday hours.
Aerial footage from the scene, captured by SkyFOX and cited by CBS Los Angeles, showed long skid marks trailing behind the downed motorcycle near the freeway's center median, consistent with the account that the rider went down in fast-moving traffic before being struck. The crash remains under investigation in Sherman Oaks, and it is not yet known what caused the rider to fall off his motorcycle.
A Notorious Bottleneck With a Troubled History
The stretch of the 405 through Sherman Oaks is no stranger to gridlock or tragedy. The corridor carries between 300,000 and 400,000 vehicles daily near its junction with the 101, making it one of the most congested bottlenecks in the country, according to the Los Angeles Times. Just this past March, a separate crash on the 405 near the Burbank Boulevard off-ramp left a motorcyclist severely injured and shut down HOV and adjacent lanes during the evening commute, as reported by Canyon News.
Hoodline previously covered a fatal DUI crash at the same 405-to-101 transition road last November, which shut down the connector for over four hours after a disabled vehicle was struck by oncoming traffic.
Lane-Splitting Rules and Statewide Fatality Trends
California is the only state that explicitly authorizes motorcycle lane-splitting, under Vehicle Code Section 21658.1, enacted through Assembly Bill 51 in 2016, according to Justia Law. That statute leaves educational safety guidelines to the California Highway Patrol without setting a fixed speed cap for the maneuver. Research from UC Berkeley's SafeTREC program has found that motorcyclists who split lanes in dense traffic suffered significantly lower rates of severe rear-end impact injuries compared to riders who stayed in a single lane, though it remains unclear whether lane-splitting was a factor in Wednesday's crash.
Statewide, motorcyclist deaths have remained a persistent concern even as the numbers have ticked down slightly. In 2023, 583 motorcyclists were killed on California roadways, a 10.2 percent decline from 649 deaths the year before, according to the California Office of Traffic Safety — though that figure remained nearly 19 percent higher than pre-pandemic levels. California also leads the nation with more than 930,000 registered motorcycles and consistently ranks third nationwide in overall motorcycle fatalities, behind only Florida and Texas, per B&D Injury Law.
No further details on the cause of the crash or the identity of the motorcyclist have been released as the investigation continues.
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