Three tourists were injured, one critically, when a tour van traveling down Kalakaua Avenue in Waikiki jumped the mauka curb and slammed into a 2-foot-high stucco wall where the three were sitting yesterday morning.

Police and witnesses said the vehicle — a 24-passenger Reliable Shuttle van — swerved a few feet onto the sidewalk after a car traveling in the lane next to the van and slightly ahead of it, tried to force its way into the same lane.

The driver of the car that appeared to have caused the incident kept going after the crash, police said.

The victims — two women and a man — are from Japan, said Jessica Lani Rich, president of the Visitor Aloha Society.

The van was driven by a 42-year-old Honolulu man. Police said speed and alcohol were not factors in the accident.

Managers at Reliable Shuttle would not return calls for comment on the accident.

The three victims were taken to The Queen's Medical Center. The most badly hurt was a 40-year-old woman who remained in critical condition, police said last night. The other two — a 52-year-old man and a 23-year-old woman — initially were in serious condition but were upgraded to fair condition, police said.

Their names were not immediately available from police. Rich said the Visitor Aloha Society will assist the victims, but that she did not yet know what kind of assistance the tourists required.

"We have some Japanese-speaking volunteers who are going to be making contact with them," she said.

The crash, at 9:35 a.m., occurred diagonally across Kalakaua Avenue from the Waikiki police substation and about half a block down and across the street from where a woman from Japan was killed May 26, 2004, when a pickup truck plowed into a group of people on the sidewalk.

Jarett Talamoa was part of a crew from Landscaping Hawai'i trimming coconut trees on the makai side of Kalakaua Avenue when he saw the crash. He said the man hit by the van flew about 10 to 15 feet through the air and came to rest near a coconut tree in a landscaped area between the curb and the sidewalk.

"The van was driving along in the far left lane when it tried to avoid the car that was trying to force its way into the same lane," Talamoa said. "It was like the car just cut the van off and the van went up on the sidewalk to try to keep from being hit."

Talamoa said several people, including a lifeguard from Waikiki Beach and several police officers from the substation, rushed to help.

Carlos Alcibar was driving his older Volkswagen van in the second lane from the left curb and was right behind the van when it ran up on the sidewalk and hit the three people.

He said he did not recall seeing another car cut the van off.

"It all happened so fast, even though it seems like it was happening in slow-motion at the time," Alcibar said.

He said he and his wife, who was in the van with him, parked right behind the tour van to see if they could help.

"We called 911 right away to report the accident, and then went to help the people," he said.

Alcibar said he tried to comfort the man while his wife stayed with the more severely injured of the two women. Alcibar said it appeared one of the women was knocked to the ground by the tour van while the other, more badly injured woman was dragged between the front of the van and the curb for about six or seven feet.

Alcibar said he and his wife asked onlookers if someone could translate Japanese into English and a woman came forward and offered to do so.

"She (the translator ) said the man kept asking, 'Is she OK? Is she OK?' " Alcibar said.

He said police later told him the man appeared to have suffered several broken ribs, and that one of the women had a severe head injury.

Alcibar said he and his wife had just left their Waikiki apartment and were on their way to Kahala Beach Park, where they were married four years ago.

Alcibar said he was so shaken by what had happened that he did not know if he and his wife would continue on with plans to celebrate their anniversary.

Yesterday's accident was similar to a fatal accident last year.

In that accident, Joseph Puuohau Jr., 62, of Palolo Valley, may have blacked out at the wheel moments before the accident. Tests did not find drugs or alcohol in his system.

Puuohau's attorney said his client had an excessively high heart rate at the time of the accident and that physicians told him that could have caused him to black out.

According to police, Puuohau "lost consciousness" and crossed four lanes of Kalakaua Avenue. The pickup truck bumped the right rear bumper of a 2003 Chevrolet Malibu driven by a man from Arizona. The truck then went onto the makai sidewalk, where it struck pedestrians, three brochure stands, a fire hydrant, two trash cans and a police officer's parked 2000 Toyota 4-Runner, investigators said.

The accident killed Hikari Ishiyama, a 24-year-old from Japan who had only been married a few days.

Puuohau pleaded no contest to driving with a revoked license. But the Honolulu prosecutor's office declined to pursue a third-degree negligent homicide charge because of Puuohau's medical condition, said Jim Fulton, spokesman for the prosecutor's office.

Puuohau is to be sentenced Aug. 24 on the revoked-license charge.

Reach David Waite at dwaite@honoluluadvertiser.com and Mike Gordon at mgordon@honoluluadvertiser.com.