97-year-old actor Dick Van Dyke suffered injuries following a single-car accident near his home in Malibu, California. The nonagenarian was reportedly treated on scene for a possible concussion and bleeding around the nose and mouth, though he was not taken to a hospital. Instead, he was picked up by an unnamed person at the scene of the crash.
Van Dyke was found behind the wheel of his 2018 Lexus and where it had crashed into a gate. The weather was reportedly rainy as well, though it hardly seems like a 97-year-old driver needs any other excuses for an accident.
TMZ recapped the fortunately not-fatal incident, writing:
Our sources say the 97-year-old film and TV legend told cops his car slid and he lost control before slamming into the gate. The streets were wet from the nonstop rain L.A.’s been getting.
As for Dick’s injuries … we’re told he was bleeding from the nose and mouth and might have suffered a concussion. Paramedics treated him at the scene, and he had no interest in going to a hospital.
TMZ added that their sources did not believe drugs or alcohol were a factor.
As happens with age, Van Dyke has experienced other driving-related accidents before. In 2013, the award-winning actor was pulled from his burning Jaguar after it burst into flames on the side of a Los Angeles freeway.
NBC reported at the time:
Numerous people called 911 at about 2 p.m. Pacific Time to report that a white Jaguar was smoking and then on fire on the right shoulder near the Parkway Calabasas exit in the west San Fernando Valley, the spokesman said. A man pulled the actor from the vehicle after seeing him slumped over the steering wheel. Some calls to 911 reported that Van Dyke seemed to be passed out.
Although the CHP had no information on Van Dyke’s condition, his wife, Arlene, tweeted that the “Mary Poppins” and “Dick Van Dyke Show” star was unhurt. “He’s fine, thank God!!” she wrote.
In his later years, a lot of attention has been paid to Van Dyke for his marriage to the 51-year-old Arlene Silver, which presents an age gap of four and a half decades for the pair. Van Dyke lost his long-time partner in 2009 to lung cancer and has said that Silver, whom he met when she was working as a make-up artist at an award show in 2006, was by his side.
“She is the best wife,” Van Dyke once told the Malibu Times. “She’s made me the happiest man in the world. Our life is so good together.”
He more recently joked with People magazine that his secret to his long life and relative vibrancy at the age of 97 was “having a beautiful young wife” half his age to take care of him. He would go on to give credit to Silver for helping maintain his “positive attitude.”
On preferring having a partner over being alone, Van Dyke has also shared with People before that what keeps him going in life is having “somebody to love.”
“I have a few friends who have always enjoyed living alone,” he said about finding love in his 80s and keeping it well into his 90s. “But for some reason, that just isn’t the life for me. You gotta have somebody to love.”
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