Dick Van Dyke, 97, injured in car accident, reports say

Comedy icon Dick Van Dyke was injured in a single-vehicle auto accident on March 15, according to belated reports on Wednesday. 

TMZ.com, citing anonymous law-enforcement sources, said the 97-year-old Television Academy Hall of Famer and four-time Emmy Award winner was driving a 2018 Lexus LS 500 on rain-slicked pavement in Malibu, California, when he lost control and crashed into a gate. The website said deputies found him bleeding from the nose and mouth and having possibly suffered a concussion.

He declined hospitalization and paramedics treated him at the scene. Police determined no drugs or alcohol were involved, but they did submit paperwork to the DMV to request Van Dyke retake his driver's license test, TMZ said.

People magazine Wednesday said it had independently confirmed the report with police. Van Dyke's representative did not respond to a Newsday request for comment.

Van Dyke, star of "The Dick Van Dyke Show" in the 1960s, the "Diagnosis: Murder" mystery series and TV-movies of the 1990s and 2000s, and films including "Bye Bye Birdie" (1963), "Mary Poppins" (1964) and "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" (1968), has remained active on-screen, and last month was revealed as a contestant on "The Masked Singer."

The actor, who also has a Tony Award and a Grammy Award, has not commented publicly on the accident.

He similarly made headlines in 2013 after a Jaguar he was driving caught fire while parked on the side of a Los Angeles freeway. Van Dyke had pulled over after the luxury car began emitting "a little smoke," he told "Access Hollywood" weeks afterward. "I called up [the automobile assistance company] AAA and tried to tell them. And then I saw flames coming out and I said never mind." He added, “The funny thing is the fire department was there in about 12 minutes, the paparazzi were there in 10."

In the meantime, a fellow motorist offered help. “I was [bent over] picking up my stuff off the [car] floor and a guy came and … he yanked me out of the car,” Van Dyke said. “He was a good Samaritan.” The car exploded into flames afterward, Van Dyke's representative said at the time.

Two days after that accident, following the other motorist telling CNN how he had gotten the star from the car and walked him away, Van Dyke tweeted jokingly, "My 'rescue" was like the Boy Scout who helped the old lady across the street, who didn't want to cross the street!!"