Police were called to a property on Beasley Road near Lucknow around 3.30pm yesterday when a resident found a man matching the description of the missing driver asleep in a tractor.

The man, who was reported to be barefoot, wandered away from the property, but was picked up by police a short distance away.

It is believed he spent the night in the tractor.

The man was wanted in relation to a fatal car crash on Tuesday night in which a 75-year-old Millthorpe man was killed.

Witnesses at the accident scene on Tuesday night told police the driver, a man in his 30s, may have had a head injury as he seemed confused and dazed after he exited his vehicle, a white utility, which had flipped onto its roof. He left the scene a few minutes after the accident.

Police say the elderly man was heading east on the Mitchell Highway near Lucknow when the utility travelling in the opposite direction crossed to the wrong side of the road and collided with him.

Canobolas local area command Duty Officer Dave Harvey said the driver of the ute may have known the fate of the other driver before he walked away from the area.

On Tuesday night emergency services spent several hours searching for the man in the area around the crash site and returned to the area yesterday morning to resume the search before PolAir joined them around lunchtime.

Inspector Harvey said police, who knew the man’s identity, had also doorknocked a number of addresses in Orange in an effort to track him down.