Car Crash Takes Out Signal at 8th/Sepulveda
Jun 09, 2026 08:50AM ● By Mb News Staff
Paramedics were seen attending to one person, apparently the solo driver, who was sitting on the grass outside the restaurant looking shaken, though not obviously injured.
The crash made a noise heard for blocks around, described by one observer as sounding like "a truck being dropped from the sky."
The vehicle, a late-model compact SUV, came to rest on a wall that separates the restaurant's drive-through lane from the sidewalk.
A 5-foot-tall metal box, decorated with a mural, which contained traffic signal equipment, was sheared off its foundation and lay on its side on the sidewalk. Parts of the car and the control box were strewn about for 10 yards north of the accident site, on the sidewalk and in the parking lot.
Police blocked all traffic going north on Sepulveda for 3 hours while the accident was being investigated and cleaned up, issuing an all-clear just before 8:30pm. (Emergency alerts only stated that 2 of the 3 lanes at the site were blocked.)
MB News has asked for further detail on the accident from MBPD, and this story will be updated as more information is received.
CalTrans workers arrived on the scene after dark, working to reinstall control systems for the vital light at 8th Street.
While they worked, 8th was blocked on both sides of Sepulveda to prevent cars from trying to go across.
With the light completely out, traffic on the main highway breezed through the intersection. MB News observed people walking and riding e-bikes who came to the intersection and crossed Sepulveda without any assistance or right-of-way – a potentially dangerous situation for each crossing. (Traffic coming south on Sepulveda is almost blind to the intersection until the last half-block or so, due to a hill.)
By morning, CalTrans had completed installation of new traffic control equipment, and the signal was functioning normally.
