The Kansas Highway Patrol says a driver illegally passing traffic on the shoulder of Interstate 35 in Lenexa caused a rush-hour crash Tuesday night.
The collision caused a nearly three-mile-long traffic jam.
Highway Patrol troopers were called to the southbound lanes of I-35 under I-435 just before 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday.
Lenexa firefighters and Johnson County Med-Act paramedics reported a multiple-vehicle crash. Two of the vehicles were described as having heavy damage.
The involved vehicles stopped on the left shoulder and across parts of the three right lanes of the highway.
According to the Highway Patrol’s online crash log, a 33-year-old Lenexa man was driving a 2005 Acura MDX on the highway’s left shoulder, illegally passing vehicles in traffic.
When the driver attempted to return to the left lane of the interstate, he rear-ended a Chevrolet Tahoe.
The impact caused a chain-reaction crash, with the Tahoe hitting a Nissan Juke, which was pushed into a Subaru Forester.
Traffic quickly backed up and came to a crawl as it approached the U.S. Highway 69 flyover, three miles from the crash scene.
Three people were checked out at the scene for minor injuries.
Johnson County Med-Act transported the driver of the Tahoe to a nearby hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. No one else required an ambulance.
Lenexa firefighters assisted with blocking two lanes of the interstate until tow trucks could remove the damaged vehicles from the highway.
All lanes reopened before 6:30 p.m.
The patrol’s crash log does not have any information about any citations issued to the driver of the Acura that caused the crash.
