Video shows fists flying during rush hour wrestling match on Toronto highway

Toronto traffic is often frustrating enough to bring on bouts of road rage, but new video making the rounds on social media appears to show two men taking their exasperation to an extreme level.

The footage, captured by witnesses from multiples angles, shows two men engaged in a wrestling match in live lanes of Highway 401 during evening rush hour traffic.

Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) confirm the incident happened around 5 p.m. Tuesday in the westbound lanes of the highway near Leslie Street.

“You know you’re having a bad day when you find yourself rolling around on the highway, fighting with someone else who you became annoyed with,” says OPP Sgt. Kerry Schmidt, in his own video posted to X on Thursday morning.

Another View: Road Rage Turns Into Wrestling Match On Hwy401.
Via: Insta/areacode416ix
.#HWY401 #ONHwys #ONpoli #RoadRage #fight #Ontario #Toronto #TrafficAlert #trucking #TruckDriver #Transportation #RoadSafety pic.twitter.com/4Lk5hFA0qY

— 401_da_sarpanch (@401_da_sarpanch) September 13, 2023

A witness video shot through the windshield of one vehicle shows two people engaged in a struggle and rolling around on the pavement in front of a line of traffic. Other motorists appear to be waiting until the brawl wraps up before they fill in the gap in traffic and continue along the highway.

Another angle shot from the rear of a vehicle up ahead of the melee captures fists flying between the two combatants as they fall to the ground.

The man who recorded the fight says he called OPP while it was taking place. Schmidt tells CityNews the fight had cleared before officers arrived on scene.

“An officer was able to speak with one of the involved fighters,” he says. “They admitted it was a road rage situation.”

Not worth it! – Road Rage incident on #Hwy401/Leslie. #TorontoOPP investigated and cautioned one of the drivers after witnesses called police to report the altercation.
(Pictures sourced from online videos – not OPP content) pic.twitter.com/3AZczM2tp6

— OPP Highway Safety Division (@OPP_HSD) September 14, 2023

No other details have been made available. There is no word on exactly how the fight started.

“This is something that should never be happening,” Schmidt says. “If you’re going to get hot under the collar, please don’t turn it into physical actions. This is certainly unacceptable.”

The highway brawl is just the latest in a series of high-profile road rage incidents that have occurred on Highway 401. Earlier this year, OPP investigated a road rage incident that led to a serious crash involving two motorcycles and an SUV in Durham Region.

Last year, occupants of one vehicle threw an object and damaged the window of another vehicle on the highway in Etobicoke.