One injured in two-vehicle collision on Highway 305 near Bond Road

POULSBO – It could have been worse, someone said, but the Lemolo man driving fatigued behind the wheel doubted that sentiment.

Sure, a guardrail kept him and his Toyota Corolla on the road and out of Dogfish Creek, and he was not injured.

But he pointed to James Lambeth, whose truck he crashed into during evening rush hour May 22 on Highway 305 near Bond Road. The back of Lambeth’s shaved head was bandaged; it had hit the back window of the pickup he was driving, shattering the window.

“I’d rather hurt myself than someone else,” said the Toyota Corolla driver, who declined to give his name.

The crash occurred shortly before 5 p.m. in the southbound lane of 305. The Lemolo man said he was driving “traffic speed at best” but believes he passed out from fatigue and heat. When he came to, he said, the front of his car was smashed into the guardrail and his driver’s and passenger seat airbags had deployed.

“I don’t do well in the heat,” he said. He was heading home from his job at Kaiser Permanente in Port Orchard; he gets up at 3:30 a.m. “I was fighting fatigue and the heat got me,” he said.

North Kitsap Fire & Rescue, Poulsbo Fire, Poulsbo Police and State Patrol went to the scene. But the first on the scene were two paramedics from Vancouver, B.C., who happened to be driving by when the collision occurred. Lambeth’s girlfriend, Holly, who was following in another vehicle, said the medics stopped, rendered aid, “then left before I could even say thank you.”

The driver’s side rear quarter-panel of Lambeth’s pickup was crunched. The dashboard panel was unattached from the console. The pickup was going to have to be towed from the scene. In fact, both vehicles were no longer operable.

Holly said they had gotten the truck about two weeks ago and were going to use it to move from Bremerton to Poulsbo. Still, her boyfriend managed to find some sense of humor. Asked if he was feeling OK, he referred to the bandage on the back of his head. “I won’t be shaving there for a while,” he said.

A car and a pickup truck collided shortly before 5 p.m. in the southbound lane of Highway 305, May 22. A Lemolo man said he was driving “traffic speed at best” but believes he passed out from fatigue and heat. When he came to, he said, his car had crashed into a pickup truck and then a guardrail. (Richard Walker/Kitsap News Group)