A wrong-way crash on southbound Interstate 280 in San Mateo County killed two people Thursday evening after a Lexus crossed the concrete median into oncoming traffic near the Foothill Expressway, striking multiple vehicles. One driver was transported to the hospital as a precaution, and southbound lanes stayed shut for hours while crews cleared the roadway.
According to KRON4, the Lexus was traveling northbound on I-280 before it crossed the median into the southbound lanes, based on a preliminary CHP investigation. The California Highway Patrol's Redwood City office received reports of the collision at about 5:09 p.m. Thursday, per the same report. The Lexus driver and the driver of another vehicle were both pronounced dead at the scene, CHP told the station, while a third driver was taken to a hospital as a precaution. Authorities had not released additional information about the drivers as of the station's report.
Conflicting Counts on How Many Cars Were Involved
Exactly how many vehicles got caught up in the crash remains unclear. KRON4's account, attributing the figure to a preliminary CHP investigation, says officers found five vehicles involved — the Lexus plus four others it struck. But the CHP Fatal Accident Feed logged the incident as an eight-vehicle traffic collision at the Foothill Expressway off-ramp. The dossier does not resolve which count is correct, and CHP is still investigating what caused the crash and how the Lexus ended up crossing into oncoming traffic, the station's report notes.
The dispatch feed placed the crash squarely on southbound I-280 at the Foothill Expressway off-ramp and shows traffic being diverted at the Magdalena Avenue on-ramp area while responders worked the scene. Caltrans assisted CHP at the location, per the same feed. The roadway was reported clear at around 9:10 p.m., and the SigAlert was canceled shortly after, though the precise time southbound lanes fully reopened was not specified beyond later Thursday evening.
A Familiar and Deadly Pattern on Bay Area Freeways
This is not an isolated event for San Mateo County's stretch of I-280. In an earlier wrong-way crash in Woodside, a white Ford sedan driving north in the southbound lanes slammed head-on into a black BMW SUV around 2:38 p.m. in the number-four lane, according to ABC7 San Francisco. That crash killed the BMW's driver, a 54-year-old San Francisco woman, and seriously injured a 14-year-old passenger.
Wrong-way crashes remain statistically rare but consistently lethal. They account for less than one-half of 1% of crashes in California, ABC7 reports, yet wrong-way drivers kill an average of 500 people nationwide every year. The outlet also found that wrong-way driver crashes climbed in California from 208 in 2019 to 220 in 2020 and 296 in 2021. A CHP officer told the station that impairment — alcohol, drugs, or both — very often plays a part in these incidents, and CHP has said alcohol was believed to be a factor in three of four wrong-way crashes investigated over one recent weekend, including one in Marin County.
Caltrans Has Tried Reflectors to Curb Wrong-Way Drivers
State transportation officials have experimented with low-cost fixes for the problem. Caltrans has said a pilot program in the Sacramento area using reflective highway markers produced a 60% drop in wrong-way drivers in 2018, per ABC7's reporting. A separate Caltrans release described the reflectors, which alert drivers they are entering a roadway in the wrong direction, as successful enough during a three-year pilot that the agency moved to expand their installation.
Similar crashes have cropped up elsewhere in the South Bay recently. A wrong-way collision near East Capitol Expressway and Tuers Road in South San Jose killed one person and injured two others just before 6:30 a.m. on a Sunday, according to the East Bay Times. In that crash, two women traveling westbound in eastbound lanes in a 2004 Honda Accord collided head-on with a 2010 Toyota Prius. The outlet also reported that the collision marked San Jose's 41st traffic death of the year, compared with 29 roadway deaths at the same point in 2025.
No further details on the identities of those killed in Thursday's I-280 crash, or on what ultimately caused the Lexus to cross into oncoming traffic, had been released as CHP's investigation continued.
