MONROE — A Duvall man is dead after a three-car crash Tuesday on a stretch of U.S. 2 near Monroe.
The crash occurred around 9:45 a.m. on a straight stretch near Roosevelt Road between Snohomish and Monroe, said Travis Shearer, a trooper with the Washington State Patrol. The two-lane section of highway is separated only by rumble strips. The roadway was closed for several hours while troopers investigated.
Two vehicles hit headlight-to-headlight on their driver sides, Shearer said.
An eastbound Hyundai passenger car crossed the centerline and struck a westbound Jaguar, Shearer said. The driver of the Jaguar died at the scene. He was identified as Jeff Lucas, 56.
The woman driving the Hyundai was taken to Providence Regional Medical Center Everett. Her injuries were not believed to be life threatening. She was identified as being 72 and from Lake Stevens.
After the initial collision, the Jaguar crossed into the eastbound lane and was rolling toward a guardrail when it was struck on the passenger side by a pickup truck. The two people in the pickup were not injured. The driver was a Granite Falls woman, 47.
Neither alcohol nor drugs were believed to be factors in the crash, according to a State Patrol memo.
A fourth car sideswiped a guardrail but did not hit any of the three vehicles involved in the crash.
The last serious injury crash on U.S. 2 between Everett and Stevens Pass was in September, when a car crossed the centerline near Old Owen Road.
There were two fatal crashes in 2014. One was a crossover crash between Bickford Avenue and Highway 9 in January. The last fatal accident happened in July near Fern Bluff Road. A car was turning off the highway when it was struck by a westbound car.
Two electronic reader boards installed along the highway in 2009 keep running tallies of days between serious accidents that once seemed so commonplace along U.S. 2. The longest stretch reached 196 days, ending in February 2011.
Tuesday’s fatal crash was 1.9 miles east of one of the reader boards. It reset from 156 days to zero.
There were no traffic improvement projects on the highway last year and none are planned for this year, said Kris Olsen, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Transportation. The last improvements were made in 2013 near Fryelands Boulevard and Roosevelt Road, about one mile east of Tuesday’s deadly crash.
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