StarBulletin.com

Traffic reporter views crash—from driver's seat


By

POSTED: Wednesday, February 17, 2010

As KSSK's traffic reporter, Jason Yotsuda spends much of his time telling his listeners about highway accidents in Honolulu. On Monday morning he called the station to report his own.

One thing is clear: It wasn't Yotsuda's fault. The other vehicle was barreling along on H-1 in the wrong direction. It was 4:45 a.m., well before sunrise, on the highway near the Punchbowl onramp. Yotsuda said he was heading west at 55 mph, in the left lane.

;

“;I saw his headlights,”; Yotsuda recalled yesterday. “;I thought he was on the other side of the freeway, with bright lights on, and all of a sudden I saw his headlights in front of me. I was like, 'Whoa!'

“;I just cocked the wheel and swerved, but he still struck me,”; he said. “;I ricocheted off him into the embankment, and he kept on going. He must have been drunk.”;

The other vehicle smashed the front fender and driver's door of Yotsuda's Toyota Corolla and scraped the length of the car. The mirror was sheared off and some of the metal on the door peeled back, exposing part of the frame. But Yotsuda was unhurt.

He called police. There wasn't much traffic at the time, Yotsuda said, but another driver pulled over and told police the vehicle heading the wrong way was a dark-colored Dodge Ram pickup truck.

Caroline Sluyter, spokeswoman for the Honolulu Police Department, said that calls started coming in to police at around 4:45 a.m. about a truck headed the wrong way on H-1.

“;We had at least four calls about that with differing descriptions of the pickup truck,”; she said. “;Some people said it was white; some said it was black. All said it was going in the wrong direction. Officers were responding and trying to find it. I have varying license numbers.”;

Sluyter said there is a possible suspect in the case and is asking for anyone who may have seen the truck to call police.

Yotsuda, 48, was heading to the Great Aloha Run and had just passed the westbound onramp to H-1 from Punchbowl Street when he was hit.

“;Everything happened so fast, there was no time to have any kind of feeling except reaction,”; he said. “;Afterwards I was a little shaken. It was not until I tried to go to sleep when everything really played out in my mind. I was kind of upset at the guy for not stopping.”;

A traffic reporter for 11 years, Yotsuda never made it to the Great Aloha Run. But he kept his head and did his job.

“;It's kind of trippy because usually I report, and this time I was in it, so I called the station and I reported my own accident,”; he said with a chuckle.