Sergeant Keith Newell, of Queenstown, said the 45-year-old was allegedly driving his rental van on the wrong side of the road around a bend when it collided with an oncoming car at 11.20am.
The driver of the car, a Queenstown man also aged 45, suffered cuts and bruises.
One of the van's four occupants, a 15-year-old boy, was knocked out and taken to Lakes District Hospital.
The crash occurred on the unsealed section of the road, Sgt Newell said.
The man will appear in the Queenstown District Court on Tuesday.
●A German doctor on a motorcycle tour of New Zealand was one of the first at the scene of an accident on the Haast Pass highway yesterday.
He treated a female tourist before she was flown to Lakes District Hospital with back injuries after a car she was in left the road and rolled down a bank. Emergency services were called to the scene, about 40km southeast of Haast, just after 3pm after the Toyota Corolla left the road.
Fire crews from Wanaka, Hawea, Makarora and Haast attended the scene.
Senior Constable Ian Henderson, of Wanaka, said the two occupants of the vehicle were ‘‘elderly tourists from the United Kingdom.''
The vehicle avoided a series of trees and was ‘‘lucky'' not to have rolled when it went down the bank, he said.
●A tourist driver's failure to give way is the likely cause of a crash at the intersection of Arun and Tyne Sts in Oamaru yesterday, police say.
A 50-year-old Oamaru woman driving north on Tyne St suffered minor injuries after a camper van driven by a 57-year-old Chinese national failed to give way at an Oamaru intersection and drove into her path about 1pm.
The camper van driver and her three passengers were not injured. Police said it was too early to say whether any charges would be laid.
