AN OIL industry engineer and former diving instructor was killed in a road accident in Saudi Arabia when a lorry careered into his path, an inquest has heard.

Steven Lonsdale, 37, from Colne, was driving to work in Jubail Industrial City in February 2010, when he sustained fatal injuries after the truck crashed through a central reservation and collided with his car.

Mr Lonsdale, who had worked overseas for the previous five years, was a former apprentice of the year at Lucas Automotive in Burnley, where he had worked for 16 years.

Burnley coroner Richard Taylor said that despite several attempts, little information had been received from the Saudi authorities.

However, he had established that on the morning of the incident, Mr Lonsdale had been driving to work at B&W Fluid Dynamics when a Mercedes truck unit had deviated from the opposite carriageway and struck his car.

The incident happened in thick fog and Saudi authorities had concluded that the lorry driver “was 100 per cent responsible for the accident”.

Mr Lonsdale left East Lancashire in 2005 to pursue his dream of becoming a diving instructor.

He worked on the island of Koh Phi Phi, in Thailand, and the Turks and Caicos islands in the Caribbean.

He returned to engineering, working in India and Abu Dhabi before being sent to lead a project in Saudi five months before his death.

In the aftermath of his death, his father David and stepmother Christine, from Grosvenor Street, Colne, received hundreds of messages from all over the world paying tribute to Steven.

Mr Taylor recorded a verdict of accidental death.