An elderly driver who blacked out at the wheel of his car and crashed on Front Street has offered his thanks to kind-hearted bystanders who attended to him at the scene.

Howard Saltus, 78, also counts himself “blessed” that no one suffered any injuries after he lost consciousness and ploughed into a parked car.

“I could have gone into pedestrians or ended up in the water,” Mr Saltus told The Royal Gazette, looking at the scene of the crash just east of the Flagpole.

Police officers, a nurse and passers-by tended to him until ambulances arrived, he said ­— and one even came to visit later in hospital.

For Mr Saltus, April 24 started with suspicions that all might not be well — but in spite of his nausea, he pressed on.

“I was anticipating going to the hospital as soon as I finished keeping a promise that I had made to someone, to pick them up over on Serpentine Road,” he said. “But of course, I never made it.”

Sickness turned to abdominal pain as he made his way along Harbour Road, and intensified as he drove into the city.

“I started to feel very nauseated and dizzy. It was a good day with good visibility but at 4.30pm I felt like it was 8.30pm — all of a sudden it started to go dark. As I looked west, all I could see in my head was a kind of red fire. Everything went red. Just a moment after that I thought that someone had hit me. I got out of my car to look and of course there was nobody because I had hit somebody else. At that moment, I blacked out.”

People came to his aid, including stopping him when he regained consciousness and tried to continue on his journey. Mr Saltus was taken to King Edward VII Memorial Hospital, and spent five days in the Curtis Ward.

He was told the drug Atenolol, which he had been prescribed for a heart condition, had probably caused the blackout.

“The car I struck belonged to a very considerate and understanding member of the community whose name was Jecoye Francis. His car didn’t appear to have much damage, but significant damage was done to mine.”

The front left of his car was smashed in from hitting the parked vehicle. Mr Saltus said he was glad he hadn’t lost consciousness earlier in the journey.

“If it was on Harbour Road I could have gone right over the side,” he said.

Mr Saltus has asked for a bystander who picked up his sunglasses to call him on 238-2029, or 505-2465, to get them back to him.

Describing himself as “poor as a church mouse”, Mr Saltus said he’d pay off the crash damage little by little.

“I remember that two ambulances came for me, not one,” he said. “Perhaps some of the people standing there recognised me and wanted me to be safe because of how much I’m indebted to them.”