A man died after his car swerved off a North Yorkshire road, hit three trees and flipped over into a ditch, an inquest heard.
Lamin Tamba, 33, was pronounced dead at the scene after the crash on Sunday 3 December last year.
He had been driving on the A170 Pickering road near Snainton when his Peugeot SUV car left the road.
The inquest in Northallerton heard from another driver, Laura Bradley, who had been travelling in the opposite direction.
She said it was slightly foggy, but clear enough to see, and traffic was light.
Ms Bradley saw Mr Tamba’s car coming towards her, and it wasn’t doing anything untoward.
But when it was about 20m in front of her, it “started to drift across into my lane”. It nearly hit her car before entering the grass verge before going into a ditch “where it flipped nose-first… I think it did one complete spin”, she said in a statement.
She called emergency services. A paramedic went to the scene at 2.44pm. She certified that Mr Lamba had died at 3pm.
A post mortem found that Mr Tamba died of head injuries including extensive skull fractures.
He had no alcohol or drugs in his system.
Crash investigation
TC Mal Leszczynska carried out a crash investigation. She said it was still light when the crash happened. The weather was cloudy with some mist “but the visibility at the scene was good”.
She found two tyre marks on the road from Mr Tamba’s car, one measuring 28m long.
Evidence suggested that Mr Tamba had been wearing his seatbelt. After leaving the road, the car collided with three trees before coming to rest in the ditch.
The car’s airbags deployed. The vehicle had no mechanical faults, and there was no evidence any other vehicles were involved. There were no defects on the road.
TC Leszczynska said although there was no evidence for it, “a medical episode can’t be ruled out”.
Her investigations found that Mr Tamba had had six hours sleep the night before leaving for work on the morning of the collision.
“Therefore, fatigue could have contributed to the collision,” she said.
The location of the crash
She couldn’t discount “a potential distraction from a mobile phone”. Mr Lamba’s phone was recovered from the passenger footwell, but no digital downloads were possible because it was too badly damaged.
There was no conclusive evidence as to why he lost control of the car that afternoon, the officer said.
Mr Tamba was born in Gambia and lived in Westborough, Scarborough. A GoFundMe page raised more than £4,000 to repatriate his body to his parents in Gambia.
The page described him as “a devoted husband, father, and son”. He left behind four young children.
The crash closed the road for several hours while investigations were taking place.
In his conclusion, coroner Jonathan Leach said Mr Tamba died of injuries sustained in a road traffic collision after going into the opposite carriageway “for no apparent reason” and then into a ditch.
He offered his condolences to Mr Tamba’s friends and family, who weren’t present at the inquest.