The San Francisco 49ers head coach, Kyle Shanahan, wanted to clear something up right away about the July 14 accident. He admitted that one’s on him, not the young girl who got wrongly blamed. Turns out a clerical error in the CHP’s database pointed fingers in the wrong direction, and Shanahan wasn’t about to let that stand. So what really went down wrong? He broke it down himself.

“I hit her,” Shanahan told a small group of Bay Area reporters on Tuesday. “I don’t know why it was reported that way [on the collision report database]. The police report doesn’t say that.”

From there, he walked through exactly what happened. He said he was driving about 20 miles an hour and wasn’t on his phone. Describing the moment, Shanahan said:

“It’s on my lap, and it slid off,” Shanahan said. “And I went down to look for it and took my eyes off the road for two seconds. As I was coming up, the airbags hit me in my face, and they broke my nose,” he said. “And then they said the visor really gashed me. I took my eyes off the road looking for my phone, and my car veered into someone.”

ESPN’s NFL reporter Nick Wagoner posted on X:

“#49ers coach Kyle Shanahan just spent some time describing the events of July 14. He wanted to clarify right up front that the accident was his fault. He took his eyes off the road briefly to find his phone, which fell between seats, and when he looked up he had gone over the line and into an SUV. The CHP database had a clerical error attributing the accident to the girl. Shanahan says that is not accurate.”

The accident reportedly happened on July 14, around 6:12 p.m., near the intersection of Alma Street and Hamilton Avenue in Palo Alto. Shanahan was heading south, the other driver was heading north, and somewhere in between, their vehicles collided.

Here’s where things got confusing. The California Crash Reporting System, a statewide database, had listed the 21-year-old woman as the one at fault. But according to Jeremy Jones, the 49ers VP of security, that was simply wrong. According to Jones, Palo Alto Lt. Nicholas Martinez confirmed it came down to a clerical error when the crash details were entered into the system.

He didn’t downplay how hard the crash hit.

“It’s one of those roads where there’s no forgiveness,” Shanahan said. “When I hit her, the impact was just so, I’ll just never forget how violent it was.”

The injuries were significant. Shanahan broke his nose, three ribs, and his hand, needed more than 40 stitches, and suffered a severe concussion. The other driver, the 21-year-old woman, walked away with minor injuries.

Now, as training camp opens, Shanahan will be working through recovery while trying to lead his team back onto the field.